GENICHI TAGUCHI
Archit Jain 11119010
Ankit Agarwal 11119007
[Link] P&I III Year
GENICHI TAGUCHI
(January 1, 1924 – June 2, 2012)
Electrical Engineer and Statistician
Worked during 1950’s to improve
Japan’s post-WWII telephone
communication system
Father of the “Taguchi Method” and
“Robust Engineering”
Notable awards
Indigo Ribbon, Shewhart Medal
The story of SONY
The color density of the televisions
manufactured by Sony-USA were uniformly
distributed and fell within the tolerance
limits, while the televisions from Sony-Japan
followed a normal distribution.
Sony-USA paid attention to meet the
tolerances whereas in Sony-Japan, the focus
was on meeting the target and minimizing
the variance around that target.
A much larger portion of Sony-Japan's
televisions receive higher grades then those
made by Sony-USA; hence, the customer’s
preferred the televisions sets produced by
Sony-Japan over USA.
Quality Loss Function
The traditional approach employed by
manufacturers has been to use a “step
function” that ensures that performance
fell within the upper and lower
specification limits which led to a barrier
to improvement in our industry.
To measure quality, Taguchi defines a
Quality Loss Function. The quality loss
function is a continuous function that is
defined in terms of the deviation of a
design parameter from an ideal or target
value.
Computing The Taguchi QLF
“Quality is the loss a product causes to society after being shipped, other than
any losses caused by its intrinsic functions.”
Taguchi asserted that losses in his definition should be restricted to two categories:
(1) loss caused by variability of function, and (2) loss caused by harmful side effects.
Example
If function would be an automobile that does not start in cold weather. The car’s owner
would suffer a loss if he or she had to pay some to start a car. The car owner’s employer
losses the services of the employee who is now late for work.
L (x) = k (x-N)²
where
L (x) = Loss Function,
k = C/d² = Constant of proportionality
C = The unit repair cost when the deviation from target equals the
maximum tolerance level
d = Tolerance interval (allowable parameter variation from target to SL) 5
N = Target value
x = The actual metric value for a specific product
V = Deviation from target = Y-T
What is ROBUST Design ?
A design that has minimum sensitivity to variations in
uncontrollable factors.
The idea behind robust design is to improve the quality of a product by
minimizing the effects of variation without eliminating the causes (since
they are too difficult or too expensive to control).
It is an off-line quality control method that is instituted at both the
product and process design stage to improve product manufacturability
and reliability by making products insensitive to environmental conditions
and component variations.
To achieve desirable product quality by design, Taguchi suggests a three-stage process:
1. System Design
The system design stage is where new concepts and knowledge in science and
technology are utilized to determine the right combination of materials, parts,
processes and design factors that will satisfy functional and economical specifications.
2. Parameter Design
In parameter design the system variables are experimentally analysed to determine
how the product or process reacts to uncontrollable “noise” in the system.
Parameter design is related to finding the appropriate design factor levels to make the
system less sensitive to variations in uncontrollable noise factors, i.e., to make the
system robust.
3. Tolerance Design
In the tolerance design stage, tolerances of factors that have the largest influence on
variation are adjusted only if after the parameter design stage, the target values of
quality have not yet been achieved.
Tightening the tolerances increases the cost of the product or process because it
requires better materials, components, or machinery.
Taguchi’s Experiment
Identification of factors
There are two types of factors that affect a product’s functional characteristic:
control factors and noise factors.
Control factors are those factors which can easily be controlled
Noise factors are factors that are difficult or impossible or too expensive to
control.
Noise factors are primarily response for causing a product’s performance to deviate
from its target value. Hence, parameter design seeks to identify settings of the
control factors which make the product insensitive to variations in the noise factors,
i.e., make the product more robust, without actually eliminating the causes of
variation.
Identification of Objectives
• Nominal-the-best type: Whenever the quality characteristic y has a finite target
value, and the quality loss is symmetric on the either side of the target, such
quality characteristic called nominal-the-best type.
Example: Color density of a television set and the out put voltage of a power
supply circuit.
• Smaller-the-better type: For some characteristic, their ideal value is equal to zero,
and as their value increases, the performance becomes progressively worse.
Examples: The response time of a computer, leakage current in electronic circuits
• Larger-the-better type: For some characteristics zero is there worst value, and as
their value becomes larger, the performance becomes progressively better-that is,
the quality loss becomes progressively smaller. Their ideal value is infinity and at
that point the loss is zero.
Examples : Bond strength of adhesives
Experimental Design
Orthogonal Arrays
The columns in the OA indicate the factor and its corresponding levels, and each row in
the OA constitutes an experimental run which is performed at the given factor settings.
It is up to the experimental designer to establish the appropriate factor levels for each
control factor. Selecting the number of levels and quantities properly constitutes the
bulk of the effort in planning robust design experiments.
Analysis
Signal to Noise Ratio (S/N)Signal to noise ratio used for predicting the field
quality.
S/N= amt. of energy for intended function / amt. of energy wasted
Example
When a person puts his foot on the brake pedal of the car, energy is transformed
with the intent to slow car, which is the signal. However some of the energy is
wasted by pad wear, squeal, heat etc. these are called noise.
Signal factors are set by operator to obtain the intended value of the output
variable.
Noise factors are not controlled by the operator or very difficult and expensive to
control.
Example
The objective is to maximize the pull-off force of a connector to a nylon tube for
an automotive application so SNL . The factors studied and there levels are tabled
below along with the results:
Screen clipping taken: 20-01-2014 22:57