Genichi Taguchi was a Japanese engineer and statistician known for his contributions to quality engineering. He developed methods for robust design and applying statistics to manufacturing processes. Some of his key contributions included developing loss functions to quantify the costs of poor quality, advocating for off-line quality control through system, parameter and tolerance design, and using orthogonal arrays in design of experiments to efficiently isolate noise factors affecting production. Taguchi influenced manufacturing quality efforts in Japan and later in Western companies through his consulting work and collaborations.

1. Genichi Taguchi
Presentation by
Kala Poduval
MPOB, MBA, ASIET
Prof. Nimal C Namboodiripad

2. Genichi Taguchi Profile
• Was born January 1, 1924, in Tokamachi, in Japan’s Niigata
prefecture
• An Engineer and Statistician, was known for his contribution
to Japanese Quality Movement
• After WWII Japan had limited resources – he revolutionised
manufacturing processes through cost savings
• Although his concepts influenced fields beyond product
design and manufacturing, such as sales process engineering
his unique methodology for applying statistics to implement
quality in manufactured goods has not been readily accepted
in the west

3. Genichi Taguchi Profile
• Initially studied textile engineering at Kiryu Technical College
with the intention of entering the family kimono business.
• During World War II, in 1942, he was drafted into the
Astronomical Department of the Navigation Institute of the
Imperial Japanese Navy.
• After the war, in 1948 he joined the Ministry of Public Health
and Welfare, where he came under the influence of eminent
statistician Matosaburo Masuyama, who kindled his interest
in design of experiments.
• He also worked at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics and
supported experimental work on production of Pencilin at
Morinaga Pharmaceuticals, a Morinaga Seika company.

4. Genichi Taguchi Profile
• In 1950, he joined the Electrical Communications Laboratory
(ECL) of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation.
• Taguchi spent his twelve years in ECL enhancing quality and
reliability of cross bar and telephone switching systems.
• He was a widely accepted consultant in Japanese industry,
with Toyota being an early adopter of his ideas.
• In middle 1950s was visiting professor at the Indian Statistical
Institute, where he worked with CR Rao, Ronald Fisher and
Walter Shewhart.
• While working at the SQC Unit of ISI, he was introduced to the
orthogonal arrays of CR Rao – which enabled him to develop
the foundation blocks of the Taguchi methods.

5. Genichi Taguchi Profile
• On completing his doctorate at Kyushu University in 1962, he
left ECL, though he maintained a consulting relationship.
• In the same year he visited Princeton University with the help
of John Tukey, who arranged a spell at Bell Labs, his old ECL
rivals where his ideas made little impact.
• In 1964 he became professor of engineering at Aoyama
Gakuin University, Tokyo.
• In 1966 he began a collaboration with Yuin Wu, who later
emigrated to the US and, in 1980, invited Taguchi to lecture.
• During the 1980 visit Taguchi himself financed a return to Bell
Labs and began a collaboration with Madhav Phadke resulting
in a growing enthusiasm for his ideas.

6. Genichi Taguchi Profile
• His methodologies were accepted not only in Bell Labs but
also companies like Ford Motor Company, Boeing, Xerox and
ITT.
• After 1982, Genichi Taguchi became an advisor to the
Japanese Standards Institute and executive director of the
American Supplier Institute, an international consulting
organisation.

7. Genichi Taguchi - Contributions
• Taguchi has made very influential contributions to industrial
statistics. Some of them are:
– Loss Function – he devised an equation to help managers find how
much revenue they are losing because of variability in production
process and resultant poor quality – which in turn leads to lost
customers as well as financial loss to society
– The philosophy of off-line quality control, which he broke down down
to three stages – system design, parameter design and tolerance
design
– Robustness - designing products and processes so that they are
insensitive to parameters (‘noises’) outside the design engineer's
control
• Innovations in the statistical design of experiments, notably the use
Orthogonal Arrays and Linear Graphs to isolate the outside noise
factors that affect manufacturing in a cost effective way

8. Genichi Taguchi - Honours
• Honorary member of the Japanese Society of Quality Control
and of the American Society for Quality
• Indigo Ribbon from the Emperor of Japan
• Walter A Shewhart Medal of the American Society for Quality
(1995)
• Honoured as Quality Guru by British Department of Trade and
Industry (1990)
• Willard F. Rockwell Medal of the International Technology
Institute

9. Thank You
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genichi_Taguchi