Design of Experiment (DOE)

Design of Experiment (DOE) is a powerful statistical technique for improving product/process designs and solving production problems. A standardized version of the DOE, as forwarded by Dr.Genichi Taguchi, allows one to easily learn and apply the technique product design optimization and production problem investigation. Since its introduction in the U.S.A. in early 1980s, the Taguchi approach of DOE has been the popular product and process improvement tool in the hands of the engineering and scientific professionals. The purpose of quality engineering is to conduct the research necessary to develop robust technologies and methods that increase the competitiveness of new products by reducing their cost and improving their quality. The old methods for quality assurance relied heavily upon inspecting products as they rolled off the productionline and rejecting those products that did not fall within a certain acceptance range. However,Taguchi was quick to point out that no amount of inspection can improve a product; quality must be designed into a product from the start. It is only recently that companies in the United States and Europe began adopting Taguchis robust design approaches in an effort to improve product quality and design robustness. The Taguchi method is a structured approach for determining the best combination of inputs to produce a product or service. It is based on a Design of Experiments (DOE) methodology for determining parameter levels.Seek to hit a target rather than a range! Minimize variation around a target value. Do not focus on tolerance ranges. No amount of inspection can improve a product . it is cheaper to ensure quality at earlier stages. Quality must be engineering into products and processes (vs. being imposed on products and processes).These issues are addressed in a stage of product development called parameter design rather than in later, detail stages of design. The idea behind robust design is to improve the quality of a product by minimizing the effects of variation without eliminating the causes (since they are too difficult or too expensive to conrol). His method is an off-line quality control method that is instituted at both the product and process design stage to improve product manufacturability and reliability by making products insensitive to environmental conditions and component variations. The end result is a robust design, a design that has minimum sensitivity to variations in uncontrollable factors. Dr. Genichi Taguchi bases his method on conventional statistical tools together withsome guidelines for laying out design experiments and analyzing the results of these experiments. Taguchi's approach to quality control applies to the entire process of developing and manufacturing a product from the initial concept, through design and engineering, to manufacturing and production. Taguchi methods are used to specify dimension and feature detail and normally follow DFM activities. In the next section we discuss Taguchis concept of a quality loss function. This is then followed by a detailed description of Taguchis approach to parameter design. Orthogonal Arrays
Orthogonal Arrays (OAs): A sophisticated switching system into which many different design variables and levels of change can be plugged. Most commonly used OAs: L4, L9, L12, L16, L18, L27

L9 (3^4) orthogonal array

To achieve desirable product quality by design, Taguchi suggests a three-stage process: 1.System design, The system design stage is where new ideas, concepts and knowledge in the areas of science and technology are utilized by the design team to determine the right combination of materials, parts, processes and design factors that will satisfy functional and economical specifications. To achieve an increase in quality at this level requires innovation, and therefore improvements are not always made. 2. Parameter design In parameter design the system variables are experimentally analyzed to determine how the productor process reacts to uncontrollable noise in the system; parameter design is the main thrust of Taguchis approach. Parameter design is related to finding the appropriate design factor levels to make the system less sensitive to variations in uncontrollable noise factors, i.e., to make the system robust. In this way the product performs better, reducing the loss to the customer. 3. Tolerance design. In the tolerance design stage, tolerances of factors that have the largest influence on variation are adjusted only if after the parameter design stage, the target values of quality have not yet been achieved. Most engineers tend to associate quality with better tolerances, but tightening the tolerances increases the cost of the product or process because it requires better materials, components, or machinery to achieve the tighter tolerances.