Genichi Taguchi
Genichi Taguchi
Born: Jan 1, 1924
Died: June 2, 2012
Is Best Known For:
- Taguchi Methods
- Taguchi Loss Function
- Design of Experiments
About
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. Genichi 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.
Timeline
Taguchi’s methodology
Taguchi’s methodology is geared towards pushing the concepts of quality and reliability back into the design stage, i.e. 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.