Genichi Taguchi

Taguchi Gen'ichi (Japanese田 口 玄 一, born January 1, 1924 in Tokamachi; † 2 June 2012) was a Japanese engineer, statistician and expert in quality improvement.

Due to the growing competition in the industrial production, the application of statistical methods in quality assurance and quality engineering grew in importance. Taguchi developed from the late 1940s named after him Taguchi method for the statistical design of experiments in order to minimize loss of quality and to make the products and production processes more robust against interference. Ultimately, it is in his method is to minimize the costs caused by a product - not just the manufacturing companies themselves, but also society in general.

He developed quality philosophy has wide application in industrial practice. For his work he was awarded the Shewhart Medal in 1995.