• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.287-296
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• 1998

We often have multiple quality characteristics to develop, improve and optimize industrial processes and products. It is not easy to find optimal control factor setting when there are multiple quality characteristics, since there will be conflict among the selected levels of the control factors for each individual quality characteristic. In this paper we propose a desirability function approach and devise a scheme which gives a systematic way of solving multiple quality characteristic problems. A numerical example is provided.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.22-31
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• 2008

The operating window method is a novel approach in quality improvement. But it has not received deserved attention in academic research. If a critical factor for competing failure modes can be identified, the probability of failure can be reduced by widening the operating window of this factor. Traditional SN ratio for the operating window advocated by Taguchi has a critical shortcoming, which has been derived under the assumption that failure rates are determined by the operating window factor only. A new metric for robustness is given for the operating window method, which has relaxed the restrictive assumption of Taguchi's SN ratio. And procedures for determining optimal conditions based on the new metric is presented. The effectiveness of the proposed approach over the traditional practice is tested with the aid of a wave soldering process.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.199-208
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• 2023

Taguchi method is one of the most popular approaches for design optimization such that performance characteristics become robust to uncontrollable noise variables. However, most previous Taguchi method applications have addressed a single-characteristic problem. Problems with multiple characteristics are more common in practice. The multi-criteria decision making(MCDM) problem is to select the optimal one among multiple alternatives by integrating a number of criteria that may conflict with each other. Representative MCDM methods include TOPSIS(Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution), GRA(Grey Relational Analysis), PCA(Principal Component Analysis), fuzzy logic system, and so on. Therefore, numerous approaches have been conducted to deal with the multi-characteristic design problem by combining original Taguchi method and MCDM methods. In the MCDM problem, multiple criteria generally have different measurement units, which means that there may be a large difference in the physical value of the criteria and ultimately makes it difficult to integrate the measurements for the criteria. Therefore, the normalization technique is usually utilized to convert different units of criteria into one identical unit. There are four normalization techniques commonly used in MCDM problems, including vector normalization, linear scale transformation(max-min, max, or sum). However, the normalization techniques have several shortcomings and do not adequately incorporate the practical matters. For example, if certain alternative has maximum value of data for certain criterion, this alternative is considered as the solution in original process. However, if the maximum value of data does not satisfy the required degree of fulfillment of designer or customer, the alternative may not be considered as the solution. To solve this problem, this paper employs the desirability function that has been proposed in our previous research. The desirability function uses upper limit and lower limit in normalization process. The threshold points for establishing upper or lower limits let us know what degree of fulfillment of designer or customer is. This paper proposes a new design optimization technique for multi-characteristic design problem by integrating the Taguchi method and our desirability functions. Finally, the proposed technique is able to obtain the optimal solution that is robust to multi-characteristic performances.