Dr Genichi Taguchi believed it is preferable to design product that is robust or insensitive to variation in the manufacturing process, rather than attempt to control
all the many variations during actual manufacture.To put this idea into practice, he took the already established knowledge on experimental design and made it more usable and practical for quality professionals. His message was concerned with the routine optimisation of product and process prior to manufacture rather than quality through inspection. Quality and reliability are pushed back to the design stage where they really belong, and he broke down off-line quality into three stages:
• System design
• Parameter design
• Tolerance design
“Taguchi methodology” is fundamentally a prototyping method that enables the designer to identify the optimal settings to produce a robust product that can survive manufacturing time after time, piece after piece, and provide what the customer wants. Today, companies see a close link between Taguchi methods, which can be viewed along a continuum, and quality function deployment (QFD).