Taguchi Methods

CORE DEFINITION

Quality Engineering, an engineering methodology founded by Japanese scholar Genichi Taguchi, uses statistical methods for experimentation and production process control to achieve both product quality improvement and cost reduction. It is also applied in biology, marketing, and advertising. Professional statisticians acknowledge the goals and advancements of Quality Engineering, particularly its study of variation, but consider some of its recommended practices to be ineffective. In honor of its inventor, it is also known as Taguchi Quality Engineering or Taguchi Methods. It is currently the most famous methodology for achieving robust design, hence also called Taguchi Methods of Robust Design. Quality Engineering encompasses three principles related to statistics: a specific loss function (Taguchi loss function), the philosophy of offline quality control, and innovations in experimental design.