QUALITY AND RELIABILITY ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL. VOL. 2.

71-79 (1986)

A REVIEW OF THE ‘TAGUCHI METHODS’ FOR OFF-LINE

QUALITY CONTROL
L. BASSO
Imperial College, London, U .K .

AND

A WINTERBOTTOM AND H . P. WYNN

The City University, Northampton Square, London ECI V OHB, U.K .

SUMMARY
The Taguchi methods have recently become popular in the U.S.A following a realization of their
importance in Japanese quality design. This review is an initial attempt to extract the important ideas while
drawing on the ‘Western’ experience with response surface methodology and experimental design.

KEY WORDS Taguchi method Off-line quality control Quality design Experimental design Response surfaces

1. HISTORY subject. The American Statistical Association meet-

In 1981 Yu-in Wu wrote the English translation of An
Introductory Text for Design Engineers: Design and
Design of Experiments by Genichi Taguchi.’ This
followed nearly thirty years of work on experimental
design in quality control which had been carried on,
largely independently of work in the West on ex-
perimental design and response surfaces. Towards
the end of this period, in Japan, Taguchi’s two
textbooks’ had become bibles for proper procedures
in product testing. In the preface to the 1981 English
text Taguchi says:
Japanese engineers’ attitude of using experimental
designs is quite different from the USA’s. Most
English books on experimental designs are written
from the viewpoints of science, emphasizing the
importance of mathematical models and statistical
theory.
Japanese engineers want to find better product
designs which are robust enough against all noise
variables by choosing the level of parameters.
ing in Las Vegas (August 1985) had an entire session
devoted to the methods, excluding a talk by Taguchi.
An ‘Institute for Taguchi Methods’ has been formed:
see References for the address. The October 1985
issue of the Journal of Quality Technology4is devoted
entirely to off-line quality control, parameter design
and the Taguchi method.
The specialized work of Taguchi can be seen as one
component of the drive for a ‘new management
climate’ in the U.S.A., a climate in which statistics
should have a key role.5 Gamin6pointsout that plants
in the U.S.A with the worst quality record had little or
no data on quality. W. E. Deming is identified as
having led the way in proselytizing the U.S.A. to the
Japanese way of thinking with his ‘14 Points for
Management’. Point 3 is
‘Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality’

Taguchi and his philosophy is said to be a major factor

in the reliability of Japanese product design. Recog-
nizing the importance of the work, A.T. & T. Bell
Laboratories organized a conference on the topic in
May 1984 at which Taguchi joined leading U.S.
workers in the area. Since that time the expansion of
activity in the U.S.A. has been dramatic. Bell Labor-
atories itself has been very active, as have other
centres, notably G.E.P. Box and co-workers at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison. This has been
stimulated also by a fuller explanation of the work by
Taguchi and Wu3 and various talks and seminars. The
National Science Foundation (U.S.A.) ‘Workshop
on Efficient Data Collection’ heard talks from M. S.
Phadke (July 1984, Berkeley) and Wu (February
1984, Berkeley) and continues to interest itself in the
2. DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
More than any of the purely mathematical or statistic-
al contributions it is the design philosophy which
stands out in the Taguchi methods. Much of the work
is written in a kind of semi-statistical jargon which is
confusing to a first-time reader. The seemingly clear
division of the problems into different categories can
quickly get submerged in a statistical analysis which is
sometimes non-standard.
The key idea is to shift the emphasis in quality
control back to the design stage (off-line). If variabil-
ity can be reduced at this stage, and ‘robustness’
increased, great financial savings can be made over
more traditional post-production inspection methods
(on-line). However, production variables creep into

0748-8017/86/0020071-10$05.00 Received 18 October 1985

01986 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Revised 10 January 1986
72 L. BASSO, A. WINTERBOTTOM A N D H. P. WYNN
the analysis in a limited way. The three stages can be
summarized loosely as follows:
design ->- production ->- use
Corrections of a faulty design at the production
phase, or even worse, recall of a product after
distribution, is seen as to be avoided through careful
initial design. Mixed in with this idea is a social
philosophy which entails minimizing the total cost to
society of a product. Thus if a small adjustment to a
design produces a large decrease in the variability of a
product, or a large decrease in cost for little or no
increase in variability, then this is of benefit to all.
This general design philosophy is accompanied by
two critical features.
Separation of variables
The design variables (factors) are separated into
two main groups: (l),those which affect the variabil-
ity of a response, called control factors, and (2), those
which affect the (mean) level of a response, called
signal factors.
An example given by Kackar and Phadke’ is a
simple illustration of the separation of variables.
Consider an electrical power circuit where the charac-
teristic of interest is the output voltage, the target
value of this voltage being yo. Assume that the voltage
is largely determined by the gain of a transistor in the
circuit and that the circuit designer is at liberty to
choose the nominal value ( x ) of the transistor gain.
Suppose that the effect of transistor gain on the
output voltage is non-linear, as shown in Figure 1.
A transistor with a gain of xo would give the
required output voltage of yo. The effect of a variation
about the nominal value xo on the resulting variation
about yo is indicated by bands straddling the nominal
values.
I ”
2% H
*I
Figure 1 . Effect of transistor gain on output voltage
However, if the circuit designer chooses a nominal
gain of x1 then, owing to the non-linearity of re-
sponse, it can be seen that the variation about the
corresponding voltage y , is much reduced.
Suppose now that there is a resistor in the circuit
which has a linear effect on the voltage at all levels of
the transistor gain. Then the resistance of this compo-
nent can be chosen so that the difference between the
voltage y , and the desired voltage yo is eliminated.
The response is then on target and the variability in
response is minimized. Thus transistor gain is a
control factor and resistance is a signal factor.
In more complicated cases the identification of
such factors requires the use of experimental design
methodology and response surface techniques, as
discussed in Sections 3 and 4, respectively, and
illustrated, in particular, by Examples 1 and 2, of
Section 5 .
The main ‘response surface’ idea in Taguchi is to
use the control factors to minimize variability and
then to correct the mean level (if necessary) to the
target value by adjusting the signal factors. One might
alternatively use the signal factors to maximize or
minimize the level.
The determination of optimum levels of gain and
resistance in the power circuit is an application of
parameter design within the overall design stage. If
the variability of response, following parameter de-
sign, is still too large then tolerance design is advo-
cated. This would mean retaining the optimum
nominal levels for factors, but reducing the variability
of individual factors in an optimal way so that the
overall variability of response is reduced to an
acceptable level. This is again an area for the
application of response surface techniques and is
illustrated by Example 2 of Section 5 .
Sources of variation
There is a profound message contained in the work
concerning the sources of variability of a product. A
long debate on controlled versus randomized experi-
mentation has continued in the West for many years
and with renewed vigour in the social sciences where
‘observational studies’ have been singled out as an
area of research. The problem is this: to what extent
does controlled experiment allow determination of
behaviour in a wider environment? For example, in
agriculture special weather conditions may prevent
the extrapolation of the results of a field trial.
Taguchi’s answer is surprisingly simple. Try to pro-
duce variability in the ‘laboratory’ by mimicking the
variability of the production process or the use
environment. Thus Taguchi has a third category of
variables called noise factors. These are variables
which cannot be incorporated into the engineering
design but which, at least roughly, can have levels set
in an experiment. They are experimental variables
but not design variables. They are said to produce
‘outer noise’ (‘inner noise’ is taken to mean more
traditional kinds of variability such as deterioration in
 TAGUCHI METHODS
components). Thus Taguchi creates a simulated en-
vironment to study the variability of a product design.
3. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
There is no doubt that the design for design (ex-
perimental design for engineering design) is a deliber-
ately forged double-edged sword. It represents a
contribution to the use of experimental designs that is
essentially creative. That is to say they are used in a
creative environment rather than the more passive
way that they are discussed in standard statistical
text books.
A typical experimental design would consist of two
parts. First a 2k or 2k x 3‘factorial experiment would
describe the treatment combinations for the design
factors. Each treatment combination (design point)
of the first design incorporates another design at
which the levels of the noise factors would be raised to
produce the simulated variability. This second design
may have a factorial structure or simply consist of
replications over different levels of a single noise
factor. Thus in the pre-etched line width experiment
(Example 1 in the present paper) the basic experi-
ment is a 2l x 3 factorial fraction with 18 treatment
combinations. At each of the latter we have 10
experiments which consist of 10 observations (except
for missing observations): 2 replicates (wafers) at
each of five levels of a noise factor. Sometimes, it is
true, there are only two or even just one observation
at each treatment combination of the basic experi-
ment.
Thus most of the examples are one experiment
(design factors) crossed with another (noise factors).
The noise factors themselves are then essentially
ignored in any subsequent analysis as model variables.
In the clearest examples (Example 1)a sample meany
and standard deviation s are calculated for each
treatment combination of the basic experiment. Sub-
sequent analysis is then performed on these quanti-
ties. In Section 4 we discuss a standard model to try to
understand this procedure.
An important statistic in the work is the so-called
signal-to-noise ratio. This is perhaps the most con-
troversial element of the theoretical part of the work.
In its simplest expression it is taken as log,,,b/s] and
is often multiplied by a constant such as 20. Its use
seems to stem from its familiarity to engineers and its
quoted utility over a wide range of examples. A
difficulty with the literature is the varying definitions
which appear. Sometimes the s is taken as a global
measure of variability such as the usual residual
sample standard deviation-particularly when there
is little replication. Alternatively,’ it seems to be a
function of an F-ratio: regression sum of squares1
error sum of squares.
The lack of a clear definition of the quantity hides
what may be an important difference between the
engineer’s and the statistician’s view of the world. In
cases in which tolerances on output levels (responses)
are measured proportional to size, the responses take
73
+
the form c( 1 E), where c is a mean level of response
and E is random error.
Then minimizing variability clearly means mini-
mizing it relative to size. In this case the signal-to-
noise ratio would be a legitimate criterion. The
present authors have pondered the existence of a
strange scale-invariant world inhabited by engineers.
This would be a world in which a commuter travelling
20 miles home and being half an hour late would be
precisely as angry as one travelling 10 miles and being
a quarter of an hour late. Joking apart, it seems
interesting to debate such notions, reminding statisti-
cians, who have no monopoly of error, that scale
invariance also plays a part in theoretical statistics;
witness the F test itself.
Another rationale for something like a signal-to-
noise ratio would be a trade-off between attainment
of a target value and the variability at the target value,
i.e. between bias and standard deviation. It would be
something closer to the t-test statistic that the ex-
pected response equals c, the target value.
4. RESPONSE SURFACES
Suppose we model the response in the usual way. Let
x = (xlr. . ., xk) be a vector of k design variables and
the response at x be given by
Y, = e0 + elxl + . . . + e g k + E,
Here E, is an error with
E(E,) = 0 and var (E,) = d?,
E, may incorporate variation over noise variables
together with experimental error. The expected re-
sponse
is often called the response surface, and may be made
more complex by inclusion of, say, interaction or
quadratic terms. Now a; may also be considered a
response surface, one which summarizes the variabil-
ity in Y , over x. Suppose that pxand &: are estimates
of E(Y,) and d?,, respectively. Then a simplified
summary of the method would be as follows: let c be a
target value of E(Y,), then
1. Identify all those x values C(c) (within the
control region) for which
Px= c
2. Within C(c) select the x-values to minimize 6;.
Alternatively instead of (2) one might consider
2’. Within C(c) select the x-values to maximize
P:l&;.
In the context of the usual analysis of variance one
may discuss how this might be carried out.
Let there be m observations at each of n x-values
x(’), . . ., x ( ~ )(recall that each x ( ~ is
) a vector of k
design variables). Assume that all observations are
74 L. BASSO, A. WINTERBOTTOM AND H. P. WYNN

uncorrelated. Define Yij as the jth observation at x(~) the model is linear with k + 1 parameters, as
and define described above, we may only use the n - (k + 1)
(i) pias the usual least squares estimate ofE(Yx) degrees of freedom from the first term in (2) to test
at x = ~ ( i ) the underlying model (notwithstanding the possible
heteroscedasticity) .
- l m
(ii) Yi= m ~ C.
j=1
Yij as the mean of the This trade-off between modelling the mean and
variance is further highlighted in a two-stage analysis
observations at x ( ~ ) in which we may identify, say, only a few design
factors xi as affecting the mean and then ‘steal’ from
the larger number of degrees of freedom produced by
l m refitting the smaller model, in order to estimate.:a
(iii) s: =
m-1
Z (Yii- yi)2as the estimate of
The aliasing between estimation of :u and E(Yx)
~

j=1
the variance of the observations at x@.
The total sum of squares can be split up in the usual
way into the regression sum of squares and the
residual sum of squares (RSS), namely
The last item in (1) (RSS) can itself be split up as
n m
RSS = m 2
i= 1
(yi - pi),+ iz= l j=1
C. (Y, - yi)2
(2)
Let a:be the variance of E, at x = x ( ~(i) = 1, . . .,n). If
these are not equal then standard theory shows that
the piare in general suboptimum estimators. Howev-
er in practice (and certainly if they are almost equal) it
is reasonable to use the pi as a good first approxima-
tion. The last term in (2) can then be rewritten as
Moreover , under normality assumptions this term is
independent of the other terms (as is each s t separ-
ately). Note also that if the residuals at x = x ( ~are
)
then
1 to obtain a balanced experiment. The objective was
Z (Yij - Ti), =
m-1 j
1
m-1
Z (YV- Ti - P; - Y;
j
+ Ti)*= &?
This shows that the analysis is equivalent to an
analysis based on the residuals.
The ‘degrees of freedom’ in this term, namely nm -
n = n(m-l), are available for estimation of u . The
: tion with design engineers and the response variable
independence allows us to go further and model the
sit back on the x-variables ‘without interference’ from
the modelling of the mean E( Yx). The penalty we pay
for using all the available degrees of freedom to
model the error in this way is only a limited number of
degrees of freedom for modelling E( Y,J, namely n. If
when we ignore significant design variables is brought
out in work by Box and Meyer.’They give an analysis
in which prior distributions militate against having
more than a few significant design factors. The
trade-off is critical when m = 1 and there are no
degrees of freedom to estimate separately each .:a
Even worse is when n < k + 1, so that variances and
means are competing for degrees of freedom. These
over-saturated models are of great theoretical in-
terest and a Bayesian methodology seems the only
way forward.
5. EXAMPLES
In this section we analyse data from three examples to
the extent required to illustrate the points outlined in
the previous sections. The first two examples use the
L18 orthogonal array which can accommodate up to
eight factors. The array is given in Appendix I. The
design factors are labelled xl, x 2 , . . .,x8 and the rows
(i = 1,2, . . ., 18) give the experimental combinations
for these factors. The factor x1 is at two levels (-1,
+ 1) and all other factors are at three levels (- 1, 0,
+l).
Example 1
This example illustrates the identification of con-
trol and signal factors in parameter design using
response surface methodology. The data given in
Table I are from Phadke et al.“’ Missing replicates
have been replaced by other replicates in each group
to obtain a microprocessor window size of 3.5 pm
with minimum variability. It is thus a ‘response on
target’ experiment. The first seven factors in the L18
array were used in a pre-etch experiment and these
were mask dimension (xl), viscosity/bake tempera-
ture (x2), spin speed (x3), bake time (x4) aperture
( x 5 ) , exposure time (x6) and developing time (x,).
The levels of these variables were set after consulta-
was ‘line-width’, a variable closely related to window
size. Table I gives the sample means 7; and sample
standard deviations, s;, for the eighteen treatment
combinations. The means and standard deviations
were calculated from the ten replicates at each
experimental combination.
 TAGUCHI METHODS 75

Table I. Microprocessor line-width data

I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

7, 2.500 2.684 2.660 1.962 1.870 2.584 2.032 3.267 2.829

s, 0.0827 0.1196 0.1722 0.1696 0.1102 0.1106 0.0718 0.2101 0.1516

i 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

7, 2.660 3.166 3.323 2.576 2.306 2.464 2.667 3.156 3.494

Si 0.1912 0.0674 0.1274 0.0850 0.0987 0.0363 0.0706 0.1569 0.0445

Basing analysis on the means in each group (the yi) Table 11. Regression sum of squares
the linear model
Due to ss DF
Yi= eo + elxjl + . . . + e7xi7 + E;, i = 1,2, . . ., 18,
XI 0.6513 1
x2 0.0170 1
was fitted using ordinary least squares (OLS). In the x3 0.7287 1
above model xii denotes the value of factor xi in row i x4 04004 1
and eiis random error. Calculations were carried out XS 0.0091 1
X6 0.5406 1
using the statistical package MINITAB which also X? 0.2214 1
outputs the analysis of variance of regression. In
Table I1 we give the breakdown of the regression sum
of squares from the analysis of variance. This enables ~

the identification of those factors which contribute SS = Sum of squares. DF = Degrees of freedom.
significantly to the response.
Only xl, x3, x6 and x7 contribute significantly to the Table 111. Experimental values for the tempera-
response. Thus a reduced model was fitted by OLS ture controller circuit
using the above four factors only. Dropping the
subscript i we obtain the fitted response surface Levels

In similar fashion a response surface was fitted for log

variance using the values ensi. There are theoretical
reasons for preferring an analysis of ens rather than s
and the reader is referred to papers by Bartlett and
Kendall" and Cox and Hinkley. l 2 Only the factorsx, ,
x4, x s and x6 contribute significantly to the linear
regression.
The fitted surface is
tion to the use of this example to demonstrate
circumstances giving rise to the need for tolerance
design.
A resistor RT is affected by the temperature of an
environment and the particular resistance RT at
which a relay activates a heater is given by

The factors x3 (spin speed) and x7 (developing time)

appear in P, but not in tits,. Thus they are signal
factors and can be used to adjust the response without
significantly affecting the variance. On the other hand
factorsx4(bake time) andx5(aperture) appear in 4bsx
but not in I$,and are therefore controlfactors. These
can be used to reduce variability without significantly
affecting the level of response.
Example 2
Taguchi and Phadke' have discussed a temperature
controller circuit and this provides a very useful
example for detailed study. Here we limit our atten-
where the quantities on the right-hand side are other
resistances (kR) and voltages in the circuit. The
experimental values given in Table I11 are different
from those used by Taguchi and Phadke, but they are
more suitable for illustrative purposes. The first six
columns of L18 were used and the correspondence
between the circuit and design factors is also display-
ed in Table 111. Simple linear relationships connect
the two. For example, Eo = x l + 8.5.
Any given level of resistance or voltage is observed
with a random error related to its specified tolerance.
76 L. BASSO, A. WINTERBOTTOM A N D H. P. WYNN

This is Taguchi’s inner noise. We have assumed that
these values are normally distributed with means
equal to the designated values and standard devia-
tions given by u = ApJ2, where p is the mean
(designated level) and lOOh is the percentage toler-
ance. For all variables we have initially used A = 0.05
so that approximately 98 per cent of realized values
fall wi hin the tolerance limits for each designated
Denote the functional form of RT-ON, given in ( 4 ) ,
byf. Also let V ( R , ) = uf, V ( E o ) = u& V(E,) = u,2.
Then, using a multivariate Taylor series expansion of
fabout the means of the circuit variables, the variance
of the response function, Vf is given to a good
approximation by
4

resistarice or voltage. V f - ,C uf(dfldRi)*

1=1

Because RT-ON is a known function of the design

factors we can use Monte Carlo methods to generate
this response for any combination of levels selected
from Table 111. Thus both parameter and tolerance
design may be investigated without recourse to Alternatively
experimentation using actual circuits. In practice a
small number of confirmatory experiments with real
circuits should be carried out following design opti-
mization.
For each row of the L18 array, using factors x I ,x 2 ,
. . ., x6, twenty values of RT-ONwere generated under
the assumptions given previously. The sample means
( j iand
) standard deviations (si)are given in Table IV. where variances are converted to tolerances by the
Exploratory data analysis revealed a strong relationships given previously. For changes Ahi in
tendency for variance to increase with increasing tolerances the corresponding change in V f is
values of the mean. This dependency is well modelled
by the relation 4
AVf i C AiR? (dfldRi)’ AXi +
i= 1
ens = - 2-45 + 0.75 &ny
A o E ~(df/dE(J2AXO + f h,EI (dfldEJ2 AX,
It follows that minimization of response is accompa-
nied by variance reduction. The opposite is true if
maximization of response is desired. Also, for a When RT-ON = 3kR, taking all tolerances at 5 per
response on target situation in which RT-c>N is not cent, we have
small, the attendant variability may be too large.
Reduction of this variability may be effected by AVf 0.225AX1 + 0.305AAZ + 0.204AX3
tolerance design. Here we would choose tighter
tolerances for the circuit variables in an optimal way, all other coefficients being very small. Thus variance
paying due regard to costs. is effectively reduced by tightening the tolerances on
A simple illustration of this follows. Suppose that the resistors R , , R2 and R3 in keeping with cost
the target for RT-ON is 3kR and that this is to be constraints.
achieved by the values R , = 0 - 9 2 , R2 = 6-0, R3 = 2 . 0 ,
R4 = 48.0, E,, = 9.5, E, = 7.5. All values are entries
Example 3
from Table 111 except that for R , which is a variable
resistor used to adjust the response to the required In this example the data consist of a 3 x 2
level. experiment with eight replications at each treatment

Table IV. Data for temperature controller circuit

i 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

-
Y, 2.39 1.23 0.954 1.80 1.49 5.96 2.06 7.88 3.04
S, 0.1804 0.0953 0.1076 0.1550 0.1202 0.6475 0.1310 0.2720 0.1476

I 10 II 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

7, 1.71 1.51 2.40 1.28 5.37 2.23 1.95 8.12 8.46

S, 0.0902 0.0870 0.2155 0.1065 0.2447 0.1057 0.2557 0.3538 0.5610
 TAGUCHI METHODS 77

Table V whole experimental configuration, which is masked

by the separate analyses. An analysis of the s,shows a
Factor DF ss very strong effect of B. Table VII shows the analysis
of variance of log si against the various factors.
A 1 13.1
A' 1 586.6
B 1 15.9 6. ERRORS IN VARIABLES
AB 1 15.8
A'B 1 56.3 Several examples in the Taguchi work raise a differ-
Error 42 509.1
ent kind of variation to that mentioned above: see the
example on page 30 of Taguchi and Wu.' This is
Total (corrected) 47 1197.4
closer to the 'errors-in-variables' mentioned which
A* denotes the quadratic component of A and has received some study in the statistical literature. If
A2Bdenotes the quadratic A by linear B interac-
tion.
a variable xi affects the model in a non-linear fashion
DF = Degrees of freedom. SS = Sums of the variability in Y arising from either variability in,
squares. or lack of accurate specifications of, a design variable
Table VI xi will affect Y differently at different levels of x. We
can model this as follows using conditional means and
B variances.
1 2

1 0.86 4.59
var (Y,) = var, E(Ylx) + E,var (Y~x)
A 2 1.12 5.00
3 2.18 4.56 If:a is roughly constant in a neighbourhood of the
'true' value of x, say m, then we can interpret
Table VII E,(var( Ylx)) as ax2.The first term on the right-hand
side is what interests us here and this is particularly so
when E(Y(x), the model, is non-linear.
Suppose for example that E( Y,) is quadratic:
A 0.213
A' 0404
B 2.546
AB 0.219
A'B 0.275
written in matrix terms as

E(Y,) = 0,) + brx + X"Ax

combination (Appendix 11). The ANOVA table is
shown in Table V.
The F-value for A (alone) is 24-74 with the
quadratic factor giving the largest contribution.
There is a suggestion of an interaction A 2 B .
If we ignore factor A the sample standard devia-
tions at the two levels of B are
level 1 level 2
B: 3.05 6.49
Similarly, ignoring B , the sample standard deviations
at the three levels of A are
level 1 level 2 level 3
A: 3.26 3-62 4-02
For the complete layout the values are given in Table
VI.
We can see clearly that since the effect of B on the
mean levels of Y is small the standard deviations at
the levels of A represent a pooled value over the
levels of B. However some of the variation over the
levels of B is explained by variation over A exposing
the aliasing with the significant factor A . Also, we are
able to identify the behaviour of the variance over the
Suppose that x is considered random with mean m
and covariance matrix V, assuming for the moment
that all the parameters O0, b , , . . ., bk and the aii are
known. Under assumptions of multivariate normality
var,E( Y,lx) = 2 trace(AV)' + 4m"'AVAm + 4b"'VAm
+ b'rVb
(a standard computation).
Furthermore, if V = a21(I is the identity matrix),
then the contours of this function (assuming A is
non-negative definite) are elliptical with centre and
axes the same as for the original model with x = m. In
other words a third response surface is obtained with a
minimum at the minimum of the 'true' model.
It is not altogether clear from Taguchi's work how
to combine the two error surfaces, one for ax7and the
other for var(E(Y1x)) into a single error curve to
represent the variation in the response, other than by
simple addition. Also some of the errors are present
in experimentation whereas some may only be pre-
sent when the design factors are adjusted.
If the question of a true cost or error response
surface is resolved then we can revert to the metho-
dology of minimizing cost subject to attaining the
target.
78 L. BASSO, A. WINTERBOTTOM AND H. P. WYNN

7. CONCLUSIONS 4. Control theory, not mentioned above, but

There is obviously scope for widening the theoretical
basis for Taguchi’s work without detracting from the
very important ‘design for design’ message. In doing
so several areas of established statistical theory can be
called on and we shall merely list examples of them.
I . Classical factorial design supplemented by more
recent work on optimum experimental design.
2. Response surface methodology.
3. Variance estimation and more generally rnod-
eflirig of variances on explanatory variables.
clearly applicable in the context of attaining a
fixed target.
5. Research on tolerance levels and calibration.
We hope that the ideas presented here will help to
identify some directions of research. This hope is
reinforced by the urgent need to reinforce the
mushrooming U.S. research activity and to germinate
it in Europe.

APPENDIX I. T H E L18 ORTHOGONAL

ARRAY

Design factors
I XI x2 x3 x4 x5 X6
~ ~~ ~-.-

1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
2 -1 -1 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 -1 -1 1 1 1 1 1 1
4 -1 0 -1 -1 0 0 1 1
5 - 1 0 0 0 1 1 -1 -1
6 -1 0 1 1 -1 -1 0 0
7 -1 1 -1 0 -1 1 0 1
8 -1 1 0 1 0 -1 1 -1
9 -1 1 1 -1 1 0 -1 0
10 1 -1 -1 1 1 0 0 -1
11 1 -1 0 -1 -1 1 1 0
12 1 - 1 1 0 0 -1 -1 1
13 1 0 - 1 0 1 -1 1 0
14 1 0 0 1 - 1 0 -1 1.
15 1 0 1 - 1 0 1 0 -1
16 1 1 - 1 1 0 1 -1 0
17 1 1 0 - 1 1 -1 0 1
18 1 1 1 0 - 1 0 1 -1

APPENDIX I1

Y Time in hours to reach end point voltage of 1 volt. Duracell Batteries Ltd.

A B
XI x2 Y-values

86.60 86.90 87.00 87.00 87.80 88.00 88.50 89.00

92.00 93.60 94.10 94-10 94.40 94.40 95-90 95.00
86.40 87.30 90.60 91.30 91.40 91.50 91.60 92.20
78.40 81.00 84.00 88-10 89.40 89-60 90-00 90.10
84-10 95.00 96.40 97.20 98.30 98.80 99.00 99.00
78-40 81.00 84-00 88.10 89.10 89-60 90.00 90.10
 TAGUCHI METHODS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are grateful to Mr. P. D. T. O’Connor
of the Reliability Group, British Aerospace Dynam-
ics, Stevenage, U.K. for suggesting this review.
Thanks are also due to Professor D. R. Cox,
Imperial College, U.K. for commenting on an earl-
ier draft of this paper.
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Authors’ biographies:
Luis Basso is a Ph.D. student at Imperial College sup-
ported by a scholarship from the Brazilian Government.
Alan Winterbottom is a former Senior Lecturer and Head
of Statistics at The City University. He is presently a
Consultant and Associate of The City University Stat-
istical Laboratory.
Henry P. Wynn obtained his Ph.D. at Imperial College
in 1970 and returned as a lecturer in 1973. He became
Reader in Statistics and Head of Statistics at Imperial
College before moving to The City University as Professor
of Statistics and Director of the Statistical Laboratory in
1985.