Continuous quality improvement through Taguchi′s online quality control methods

Abstract

A global perspective view of total quality management Ever since the industrial world began to experience tough global competition, the generic term "total quality management" (TQM) has become the centre of discussions. Though globally TQM is approved as a ladder for achieving excellence in quality to reach a superior level in the highly competitive market, there still exist differing views on the approaches involved in achieving it. Even as the industrial world witnesses strident campaigning by quality engineering experts and academicians over implementing successful TQM, many sceptical observations are made by the manufacturers who attempted to implement TQM in their firms at the expense of money and time. A brief but careful study made by the authors reveals that even though considerable efforts are made in modern manufacturing firms to facilitate employees' participation in quality improvement projects through quality circle programmes, only subtle attempts are made to review the existing statistical quality and process control practices which basically embrace the principle of compromising quality by justifying the deviations from the target parameters. This is a gross violation of the principles, objectives and philosophy of TQM. As a matter of fact, as long as these conventional statistical practices dominate manufacturing firms, there is little chance of effecting TQM, the philosophy of which lies on two main pillars, namely, continuous improvement of quality, and achieving quality through the backing of all in the concern. Already plenty of successful case studies from the

A Study About Loss of Costs of Maintenance for Equipment by Using Taguchi Method of Quality Control.

“…As practical side, the method has a graphical representation of non-perfect parts which can lead to an overall loss of costs of maintenance in the firm, and to give results approach to reduce or eliminate waste, losses in production, and rework, but there is an interrelation among Taguchi method, quality control, and quality [17]. Taguchi method can overcome bad design of maintenance of equipment, because it assists to increase inspection and uses statistical procedures during manufacturing phases [18], it takes four procedures such as: (1) definition of all relevant factors specific for the optimization problem and their values, (2) selection of suitable fields for control factors, among standard factors or their modifications, (3) conducting experiments and analysis of results, (4) conducting of the verifiable experiments, which should confirm improvement that occurs by optimum combination of factors [19].…”

A comprehensive model for process selection by considering offline and online quality control

“…Offline quality control is mainly a preventive measure used in the stages of product development or manufacturing system design to make sure the product can be designed or made less sensitive to the effects of random variation in manufacturing, environment, or even customer usages. On the other hand, online quality control emphasizes on monitoring and surveillance of the production process to identify the anomaly and to analyze and remove the causes of variation (Aravindan et al, 1995;Onwubolu, 1997).…”

Comparison of Taguchi's Partial Correction Technique With Control Charts

“…The aim of this control is to make the process exhibit a long-term stability of the expected values. [Atienza 1997] Generally, each process has its own variability, which is a natural component of the process concerned. In practice this means that it is not possible to produce two perfectly identical products; however by controlling this variability can achieve a range within the defined limits.…”