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Genichi Taguchi and Taguchi Methods - Practical, Rapid
Quality
After WWII Japanese manufacturers were struggling to survive
with very limited resources. If it were not for the advancements
of Taguchi the country might not have stayed afloat let alone
flourish as it has. Taguchi revolutionized the manufacturing
process in Japan through cost savings. He understood, like many
other engineers, that all manufacturing processes are affected by
outside influences, noise. However, Taguchi realized methods of
identifying those noise sources which have the greatest effects
on product variability. His ideas have been adopted by successful
manufacturers around the globe because of their results in
creating superior production processes at much lower costs.
Here are some of the major contributions that Taguchi has made
to the quality improvement world:
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The Loss Function - Taguchi devised an equation to quantify
the decline of a customer's perceived value of a product as its
quality declines. Essentially, it tells managers how much revenue
they are losing because of variability in their production
process. It is a powerful tool for projecting the benefits of a
quality improvement program. Taguchi was the first person to
equate quality with cost.
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Orthogonal Arrays and Linear Graphs - When evaluating a
production process analysis will undoubtedly identify outside
factors or noise which cause deviations from the mean. Isolating
these factors to determine their individual effects can be a very
costly and time consuming process. Taguchi devised a way to use
orthogonal arrays to isolate these noise factors from all others
in a cost effective manner.
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Robustness - Some noise factors can be identified, isolated
and even eliminated but others cannot. For instance it is too
difficult to predict and prepare for any possible weather
condition. Taguchi therefore referred to the ability of a process
or product to work as intended regardless of uncontrollable
outside influences as robustness. He was pivotal in many
companies' development of products and processes which perform
uniformly regardless of uncontrollable forces; an obviously
beneficial service.
Biography
Born on the first day of 1924, Genichi Taguchi studied textile
engineering at Kiryu Technical College. After WWII he worked for
the Japanese Ministry of Public Health and Welfare and conducted
the nation's first study on health and nutrition. He also applied
his quality improvement knowledge at Morinaga Pharmaceutical and
even worked for a candy maker, Morinaga Sieka, to reduce the
melting properties of caramel at room temperature.
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