Lesson 13

Product Design and Development

Robust Design

Dr. Inderdeep Singh

Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering

1
 What is Robust?
• A system (product or process) is robust if it performs properly in a wide range
of conditions.

Robust products Products that are not robust

A pen that writes until the
ink is empty
A car that starts at -20°
A vacuum cleaner that
maintains suction levels
Pen that stops writing
after a few months
A car that does not start
A vacuum cleaner that
loses suction
 Robust Design
• In the design of a new product, any design activity can be called robust, if it
leads the product;

 To have longer life (higher reliability)

 To be more consistent with use
 To be more consistent from product to product
 To perform consistently as temperature and other conditions change
 General rules for robust design
 Always identify critical characteristics (CTQs) that quantify
customer satisfaction.
 Always look for ways to reduce variation in CTQs.
 Robust Design cont..
• Robust product design is a concept, developed by Dr. Genichi Taguchi.

• It is defined as reducing variation in various product characteristics

• In other words, making the product or process insensitive to variation. This

variation (sometimes called noise) can come from a variety of factors.
Three types of undesirable and uncontrollable factors can cause deviations
(sometimes called noise) from the desired performance.
• External noise factor
Operating environmental variables such as temperature, humidity are
examples of external noise factors.

• Internal noise factors

The problems caused by deterioration such as wearing of parts, manufacturing
imperfections like machine setting etc. are internal noise factors.

• Unit to unit or variational noise factors

It indicates the difference between individual products, which are produced to
same specifications.
• Taguchi suggested a robust design method, which is a systematic method for
identifying process parameters that are most sensitive to inherent process
variation and minimize the effect of causes of variation.

• The primary goal of robust design is to evaluate these losses and effects and
determine the process conditions that would assure the product manufactured
is initially on target and the characteristics of a product, which would make
performance insensitive (Robust) to environmental and other factors.
 Designing Performance into Product

• Taguchi has recommended a three-stage process for building performance and

quality into the products.

The three stages are:

1. System (Primary or Functional ) design
2. Parameter design
3. Tolerance design
1. System (Primary or Functional ) design

• This is the first step in design and it makes use of technical knowledge to
reach the initial design of the product that delivers the basic, desired functional
performance.
• This includes the design system, sub-system and finally at the elemental level
design.

2. Parameter design

• This step aims at finding the optimum setting of the design parameters.
• At this stage, to obtain the optimum parameters, a physical or mathematical
prototype is built for the product based on the functional design.
3. Tolerance design
• In this step, the tolerances on the product design parameters are determined
considering the loss that would be caused to society when the performance
deviates from the target.

• Once the system has been designed along with the values for parameters,
the designer has to set the tolerance of the parameters.

• In tolerance design, the manufacturing tolerances that minimize the effect of

noise factors and manufacturing cost is determined.
 Example
• An automobile manufacturer wants to improve the quality of the painted
surface of its cars.
• Quality is measured by the gloss reading of the surface. The manufacturer
wants the painted surface to have a higher gloss reading (i.e., maximize the
response) and to be robust against the environment.
• Environmental factors, particularly temperature and humidity, are known to
affect the painted surface. Thus, a robust design will be used here.
The control factors have been identified to be the:
• Flow rate of the paint
• The pressure in the paint gun
• The viscosity of the paint and the cure temperature.

Table 1: Control Factors

Controllable Name Low level High level
Factors
A Flow Rate 30 50
B Pressure 3 5
C Viscosity 10 15
D Cure Temperature 120 160
Two noise factors will be taken into account:
• The air temperature (ambient = room temperature)
• Humidity (ambient = room humidity).

Table 2: Noise Factors

Controllable Name Low level High level
Factors
A’ Air Temperature 15 30
B’ Humidity 30 90