Designing for Quality: An Introduction to the Best of Tuguchi & Western Methods of Statistical Experimental Design

Rating:
Summary: Analyzing Manufacturing Processes "101"
Review: As a quality assurance manager whose educational background is in management rather than engineering, I had the privilege of using this book as a college text.
I cannot say how well I would have fared by using this book as a stand-alone tool, but it was a valuable tool in my college Design of Experiments course.
We use DOE to a point in my company, a plastics molder. In our business, however, many quality inspections are of the attribute properties, such as appearance, rather than actual, measurable variables. That is no fault of this book; however, it is frustrating that I am not able to utilize DOE more.
The book delivers its message fairly clearly, keeping in mind that I went through it page by page with an experienced instructor. It is not necessary to be a mathematical wizard to use this book, although an understanding of basic statistics would be helpful.
Anyone involved in a manufacturing operation with mutliple variables in the process would be advised to learn more about DOE, and this book would be a valuable resource, particularly for those with an engineering background.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Practical Introduction to Design of Experiments(DOE)
Review: This book was recommended to me by a quality manager of long experience and it was a very good recommendation. Having aquired an engineering degree before DOE became very widespread, I have largely had to educate myself in DOE methodology. "Designing for Quality" is written in plain language and has easy to understand directions and tables to use both in designing your experiments and analysing the resulting data. With this book, I planned, conducted and analysed data from several experiments before I ever had the assistance of a knowlegable practitioner of DOE. When I gained such assistance, I had my results and conclusions from these experiments confirmed. I am now Quality Manager for a plant of 650 employees and when I need to teach DOE, whether to an experienced engineer or a novice technician, "Designing for Quality" is the text I always use.