1924 - Dr Genichi Taguchi bornMid 1950’s - was Indian Statistical Institutes visiting professor, where he met Walter Shewhart.
1960 Awarded the Deming Application prize

1962 - awarded his PhD by Kyushu University

1964 - 1982 Professor at Tokyo’s Aoyama Gakuin University

1986 - Willard F Rockwell Medal by the International Technologies Insitute
The executive director of the American Supplier Institute, the director of the Japan Industrial Technolgy Institute, and an honorary professor at Nanjing Institue of Technology in China. Taguchi is well known for developing a methodology to improve quality and reduce costs, which, in the United States, is referred to as the Taguchi Methods. he also developed the quality loss function.

Taguchi’s methodology is geared towards pushing the concepts of quality and reliability back into the design stage, ie, prior to manufacturing.

His method provides an efficient technique for designing product tests prior to beginning manufacturing.

 

Taguchi methodology is fundamentally a prototyping technique that enables engineers/ designers to produce a robust design which can survive repetitive manufacturing in order to deliver the functionality required by the customer.
The more traditional “Goalpost” mentality of what is considered good quality says that a product is either good or it isn’t, depending or whether or not it is within the specification range (between the lower and upper spec limits i.e. the goalposts). With this approach, the specification range is more important than the nominal (target) value. But, is the product as good as it can be, or should be, just because it is within specifications? Taguchi says no to this.

Taguchi’s Product development three stages:

  1. System design stage
    Non statistical stage for engineering, marketing and customer knowledge.
  2. Parameter stage
    How the product should perform against defined parameters. The robust solution of cost effective manufacturing irrespective of the operating parameters.
  3. Tolerance design stage
    Tolerance round the desired settings. Finding the balance between manufacturing cost and loss.

Photos:

 

Genichi Taguchi

  

Links:

Taguchi Loss Function

Taguchi Designs - Engineering Statistic Handbook

 

Books:

Taguchi\'s Quality Engineering Handbook …… Design of Experiments Using The Taguchi Approach : 16 Steps to Product and Process Improvement …… Engineering Methods for Robust Product Design : Using Taguchi Methods in Technology and Product Development (Engineering Process Improv) …… Robust Engineering: Learn How to Boost Quality While Reducing Costs & Time to Market 

Genichi Taguchi