Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show a bibliographical review of the applications of the MTS throughout the time and the different fields. Design/methodology/approach The Mahalanobis-Taguchi system (MTS) is an analytical method used for the diagnosis and/or pattern recognition of multivariate data for quantitative decision making. Findings Its scope is very broad, ranging from engineering, medicine, education, and manufacturing, among others. This work presents a classification of the literature in the following areas of the MTS: introduction of the method, cases of study/application, comparison with other methods, integration and development of the MTS with other methods, construction of Mahalanobis space, dimensional reduction and threshold establishment. It realized a wide search of the publications in magazines and congresses. Originality/value This paper is a summary of the main applications, contributions and changes to MTS.

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