Genichi Taguchi Japanese engineer and statistician Date of Birth: 01.01.1924 Country: Japan

Biography of Genichi Taguchi

Genichi Taguchi was a Japanese engineer and statistician who developed a methodology for applying statistics to improve the quality of manufactured products. Born on January 1, 1924, in the small town of Tokamachi, Japan, Taguchi initially studied textile production at Kiryu Technical College with the intention of continuing his family's kimono manufacturing business.

However, in 1942, during World War II, Taguchi was called to serve in the Navigation Institute of the Imperial Japanese Navy. After the war, in 1948, he joined the Ministry of Health and Welfare, where he came under the influence of renowned statistician Matosaburo Masuyama. This inspired Taguchi to conduct experimental work while also working at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics and supporting the production of penicillin at Morinaga Pharmaceuticals.

In 1950, as statistical quality control gained popularity in Japan under the influence of American statistician William Edwards Deming and the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers, Taguchi moved to the telecommunications laboratory (ECL) of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation. He spent 12 years at ECL, developing methods to improve quality and reliability.

During this time, Taguchi began providing extensive consultations for the Japanese industry, with automaker Toyota being one of the pioneers in implementing his ideas. In the 1950s, Taguchi collaborated with numerous other statisticians and served as a visiting professor at the Indian Statistical Institute in 1954-1955, where he worked with prominent Indian statistician C. R. Rao, Ronald Fisher, and Walter A. Shewhart.

While working at the Institute's quality control department, Taguchi became acquainted with Rao's theory of orthogonal arrays, which influenced his own developments in the field. These developments are now known as Taguchi methods. Taguchi obtained his doctorate from Kyushu University in 1962 and left ECL, although he remained a consultant for the company.

In the same year, with the help of American statistician John Tukey, Taguchi visited Princeton University and was introduced to Bell Labs, ECL's long-standing rivals. In 1964, he became a professor of engineering at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo.

In 1966, Taguchi began collaborating with professor and writer Yuin Wu, who later immigrated to the United States. Wu invited Taguchi to give lectures in 1980, which led to a long-term collaboration between Taguchi and Bell Labs, as well as other companies such as Ford Motor Company, Boeing, Xerox, and ITT.

Since 1982, Taguchi has served as an advisor to the Japanese Standards Institute and as the executive director of the American Supplier Institute, an international consulting organization. Throughout his career, Taguchi has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Medal of Honor from the Emperor of Japan, the Willard F. Rockwell Medal from the International Technology Institute, and the Shewhart Medal from the American Society for Quality.