Жапон сарқырамасы және сапаны жақсарту әдістемесінің авторы Геничи Тагучи

Japanese statistician

Genichi Taguchi (田口 玄一) was an engineer and statistician. From the 1950s on, Taguchi developed a methodology for applying statistics to improve the quality of manufactured goods. Taguchi methods have been controversial among some conventional Western statisticians, but others have accepted many of the concepts introduced by him as valid extensions to the body of knowledge.

Taguchi was born and raised in the textile town of Tokamachi, in Niigata prefecture. He initially studied textile engineering at Kiryu Technical College with the intention of entering the family kimono business. However, with the escalation of World War II in 1942, he was drafted into the Astronomical Department of the Navigation Institute of the Imperial Japanese Navy. After the war, in 1948 he joined the Ministry of Public Health and Welfare, where he came under the influence of eminent statistician Matosaburo Masuyama, who kindled his interest in the design of experiments. He also worked at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics during this time, While working at the SQC Unit of ISI, he was introduced to the orthogonal arrays invented by C. R. Rao a topic which was to be instrumental in enabling him to develop the foundation blocks of what is now known as Taguchi methods. On completing his doctorate at Kyushu University in 1962, he left ECL, though he maintained a consulting relationship. In the same year he visited Princeton University under the sponsorship of John Tukey, who arranged a spell at Bell Labs, his old ECL rivals. In 1964 he became professor of engineering at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo. His concepts pertaining to experimental design, the loss function, robust design, and the reduction of variation have influenced fields beyond product design and manufacturing, such as sales process engineering.