ABSTRACT
Genichi Taguchi, who died in 2012, trained as a textile engineer prior to his service in the Japanese Navy. Taguchi’s prime concern is with customer satisfaction and with the potential for ‘loss of reputation and goodwill’ associated with failure to meet customer expectations. The search at this stage is for the optimal mix of product variation levels and process operating levels, aiming to reduce the sensitivity of the production system to external or internal disturbances. Tolerance design, the third stage, enables the recognition of factors that may significantly affect the variability of the product. The emphasis on communication and control – the systems view – recognises interdependence between processes, something which he has been criticised for ignoring. Taguchi’s first and quite critical assumption is that quality can always be controlled through improvement in design. While this may be the case for product quality, its validity in the service sector, for organisations with digital and digitally enabled product or hybrid services.
