Taguchi Method

An approach to quality management developed by dr. Genichi taguchi in 1980. The taguchi method provides: (1) a basis for determining the functional relationship between controllable product or service design factors and the outcomes of a process, (2) a method for adjusting the mean of a process by optimizing controllable variables, and (3) a procedure for examining the relationship between random noise in the process and product or service variability.

Taguchi methods are statistical methods developed by Genichi Taguchi to improve the quality of manufactured goods, and more recently also applied to, engineering, biotechnology, marketing and advertising. Professional statisticians have welcomed the goals and improvements brought about by Taguchi methods, particularly by Taguchi's development of designs for studying variation, but have criticized the inefficiency of some of Taguchi's proposals. Taguchi's work includes three principal contributions to statistics:

* A specific loss function.

* The philosophy of off-line quality control; and

* Innovations in the design of experiments.