----------  *KACKER*  ----------

    Raghu Kacker's 7 Summary Points of the
Basic Eleements of Taguchi's Quality Philosophy

1. Quality and Total Loss.
   An important dimension of the quality of a
   manufactured product is the total loss
   to society generated by that product.

2. Incessant Quality/Cost Focus.
   In a competitive ecomomy, continuous quality
   improvement and cost reduction are necessary
   for staying in business.

3. Reduction In Variation.
   A continuous quality improvement program
   includes incessant reduction in the variation
   of product performance characteristics about
   their target values.

4. Quadratic Loss Function.
   The customer's loss due to a product's
   performance variation is often approximately
   proportional to the square of the distance
   of the performance characteristic from its
   target value.

5. Engineering Designs.
   The final quality and cost of a manufactured
   product are determined to a large extent by
   the engineering designs of the product (and
   its manufacturing process).

6. Variation and Non-linearity.
   A product (or process') performance variation
   can be reduced by exploiting the non-linear
   effects of the product (or process) parameters
   on the performance characteristics.

7. Exploratory Experiment Designs.
   Statistically planned experiments can
   be used to identify the settings of product
   (and process) parameters that reduce
   performance variation.

Source--Quality Progress, December 1986, page 21.