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Altemative Approaches to Implement a DoE Program

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FigurÄ™ 4. Alternatiye D - Quality and Reliability Espertise.

conduct in-house training. Since suitable training packages were already available from outside sources, this company did not spend their own time or resources to design basie training. However, improvement efforts are underway to tailor existing training packages to make them morÄ™ specific to their applications.

This company has been very successfiil in the implementation of the Ä…uality improvement methodologies. They recognize that QFD must be applied early in a development to effectively identify opportunities for meaningful designed experiments. Therefore, courses in QFD and DoE are conducted by both broad-brush and project specific approaches. Awareness training is aiso conducted in a broad-brush fashion to establish the appropriate climate for Ä…uality improvement. Afler awareness training has been conducted, management decides how many people will actually need to attend the in-depth courses.

Conclusion

Conducting this investigation gave the authors the opportunity to analyze several successfiil DoE/Taguchi methods implementation strategies. When studying the world-class companies, three common themes emerged: (1) dedicated experts are necessary to provide proper technical content, (2) in-house, by-project training is generally most effective, and (3) DoE techniÄ…ues are most valuable when used proactively in engineering/development applications.

The implementation approach a company chooses is not the most important issue; many different strategies have led to successfiil results. The