GENICHI TAGUCHI
BACKGROUND
Genichi Taguchi was born in Takamachi, Japan on January 1, 1924. Since he was born in a city famous for kimono industry, he was expected to follow on the family business. However, in 1942, he shifted his interest in statistics and was under the mentorship ob Prof Masuyama, then, regarded by many as the best statistician.
As a Japanese engineer and statistician, Taguchi worked at the Japanese Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Public Health and Welfare, Institution of Statistical Mathematics, the Ministry of Education, and also the Electrical Communications Laboratory of the Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Company. As a researcher associate, he visited Princeton University in 1962. In that same year, too, he received his PhD from the Kyushu University.
Later, he became professor at Aoyama Gaukin University in Tokyo, and later became Director of the Japanese Academy of Quality. He received awards, namely: the Deming Application prize (1960), Deming awards for literature on quality (1951, 1953, and 1984), Willard F. Rockwell Medal by the International Technologies Institute (1986).
“The executive director of the American Supplier Institute, Genichi Taguchi is well-known for developing a methodology to improve quality and reduce costs, known in the United States as the "Taguchi Methods." He also developed the quality loss function.
"Taguchi Methods" is the American Supplier Institute's trademarked term for the quality engineering methodology developed by Taguchi, who was named an Honorary member in 1997. In this engineering approach to quality control, Taguchi calls for off-line quality control, on-line quality control, and a system of experimental design to improve quality and reduce costs.”
PUBLICATION/S:
1. Taguchi's Quality Engineering Handbook (2004). The book provides accessible material on such topics as:
· Quality loss function
· On-line quality engineering
· Signal-to-noise ratio
· Robust engineering
· Design of experiments (known as the "Taguchi method")
· Mahalanobis–Taguchi Systems (MTS)
2. Robust Engineering: Learn How to Boost Quality While Reducing Costs & Time to Market / Edition 1 (1999) (with authors Subir Chowdhury and Shin Taguchi)
“Robust Engineering, by this three-time Deming Prize winner, along with Subir Chowdhury and Shin Taguchi, is the first book to explain and illustrate his newest, most revolutionary methodology, Technology Development. It joins Design of Experiments and Robust Design as the framework on which your company can build a competitive edge. Case studies of real-world organizations Ford, ITT, 3M, Minolta, NASA, Nissan, Xerox and 9 others show you how the techniques of all three methodologies can be successfully applied. You'll hammer flexibility into your manufacturing organization to minimize product development costs, reduce product time-to-market, and fully satisfy customers needs.”
3. Taguchi on Robust Technology Development: Bringing Quality Engineering Upstream (1993)
Dr.Taguchi's comprehensive system of quality engineering is one of the great engineering achievements of the twentieth century. In this pioneering work, Dr. Taguchi uses easy to understand examples to show engineers and managers how to bring the immense power of his quality engineering methods upstream to develop the robust technologies that are essential for rapidly creating new product, refining existing ones, and manufacturing higher quality products at significantly lower cost.
Contents include: Quality and Productivity, Methods for Evaluating Quality, Methods for Specifying Tolerances, Quality Management for Production Processes, and Parameter Design.
4. The Mahalanobis-Taguchi Strategy: A Pattern Technology System / Edition 1(2002)
“The Mahalanobis-Taguchi Strategy presents methods for developing multidimensional measurement scales that are up to date with the most current trends in multivariate diagnosis/pattern recognition–namely, using measures and procedures that are data analytic and not dependent upon the distribution of the characteristics defining the system. Applications for these measurement scales are also explored across a wide range of disciplines from manufacturing to medicine.
This book presents methods that integrate mathematical and statistical concepts such as Mahalanobis distance and Gram-Schmidt’s orthogonalization method with the principles of Taguchi methods. These completely new systems of measurement and analysis move beyond anything Dr. Taguchi has done in the past. Coverage includes the refined Mahalanobis-Taguchi system, the Mahalanobis-Taguchi-Gram-Schmidt method, the Adjoint Matrix method, and other advanced topics, along with a detailed examination of each method. In addition to examining how real-world problems are solved using these methods, critical comparisons are made between the methods covered here and existing multivariate diagnosis/pattern recognition techniques. “
5. Taguchi Methods: Signal-to-Noise Ratio for Quality Evaluation (1993)
CONTRIBUTION/S:
Taguchi's contributions are in robust design in the area of product development. The Taguchi Loss Function, The Taguchi Method (Design of Experiments), and other methodologies have made major contributions in the reduction of variation and greatly improved engineering quality and productivity. By consciously considering the noise factors (environmental variation during the product's usage, manufacturing variation, and component deterioration) and the cost of failure in the field, Taguchi methodologies help ensure customer satisfaction.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Taguchi Method. Quality control methodology that combines control charts and process control with product and process design to achieve a robust total design. It aims to reduce product variability with a system for developing specifications and designing them into a product or process.
REFERENCES
Rose, K. (2005). Project quality management: Why, what, and how. USA: J. Ross Publishing, Inc.
http://www.qualitygurus.com/gurus/list-of-gurus/genichi-taguchi/
http://www.skymark.com/resources/leaders/taguchi.asp
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/history_management/tqm.html
http://www.enotes.com/management-encyclopedia/quality-total-quality-management
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/Taguchi-method.html
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