Application of Taguchi Approach for Process Design for Quality Improvement in a Multistage Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

Fulfilment of human need is not only to provide goods or services in abundance to attain functional requirement by keeping other requirement unfulfilled. Other than functional requirement, various other requirements have to be fulfilled by adding additional values into the product. A defect free product at lower cost satisfies the customer to a greater extent. Defect free and low cost are attributes necessary to be embedded into the product by manufacturer to acquire better accessibility by the customer and to have competitive advantages over the existing competitor in the market. Defect free is one of the measures of quality. Thus, manufacturer s task is not only to provide quantity of goods, but they must provide quality also. Quality is a major concern of the manufacturer and it need to be built in totality through continuous improvement of process and product design. It requires investigation on existing process involved in manufacturing and redesigning it. newlineThe endeavour of quality building is not only the conformance of the design requirement while they are manufactured to attain the usability of the product but also to keep variability of targeted performances to its minimum level and to reduce losses in the hands of manufacturer and customers. It therefore, requires a systematic, synergic and cybernetic study with a system approach involving all necessary elements or attributes of the system and its dependencies to judge and evaluate its quality impact in totality of a manufacturing system. newlineA multistage manufacturing system is complex aggregation of different interdependent and interrelated subsystems. Complexity of such a manufacturing system is more when the subsystems or workstations are located remotely in a widespread area. newlineSteel manufacturing in an integrated steel industry is a case of such a complex multistage manufacturing system. In such a complex system, designing of a process is not an easy task for producing defect free products at lower cost. Objective of obtaining defect free products at lea