Applying the Mahalanobis–Taguchi System to Improve Tablet PC Production Processes

Product testing is a critical step in tablet PC manufacturing processes. Purchases of testing equipment and on-site testing personnel increase overall manufacturing costs. In addition, to improve manufacturing capabilities, manufacturers must also produce products with higher quality and at a lower cost than their competitors if they are to attract consumers and gain a competitive edge in their industry. The Mahalanobis–Taguchi System (MTS) is a novel technique proposed by Genichi Taguchi for performing diagnoses and forecasting with multivariate data. The MTS can be used to select important factors and has been applied in numerous engineering fields to improve product and process quality. In the present study, the MTS, logistic regression, and a neural network were used to improve the tablet PC product testing process. The results indicated that the MTS attained 98% predictive power after insignificant test items were eliminated. The MTS performance was superior to those of the conventional logistic regression and neural network, which attained 93.3% and 94.7% predictive power, respectively. After the testing process was improved using the MTS, the number of test items in the tablet PC product testing process was reduced from 56 to 14. This facilitated the development of more stable test site configurations and effectively reduced the testing time, number of testers required, and equipment costs.