Paddy Water Environ (2017) 15:1–9
DOI 10.1007/s10333-016-0522-6
ARTICLE
Implementation of Taguchi methodology in optimization
of developed jigs and fixtures for production of paddy weeder
Ankitesh Shrivastava1 • Ajay Verma2
Received: 18 February 2015 / Revised: 5 October 2015 / Accepted: 2 January 2016 / Published online: 14 January 2016
Ó The International Society of Paddy and Water Environment Engineering and Springer Japan 2016
Abstract Chhattisgarh is one of the major rice growing
states of India, and paddy is the main crop, cultivated in
about 76 % of area under agriculture. Mechanical weed
control helps reduce the drudgery involved in manual
hoeing. Manufacturing process of paddy weeder involves
several operations that are to be performed sequentially,
repeatedly, effectively, and hence, emphasis is to perform
all the operations more efficiently as well. Jigs were
designed with the help of software Solid Works and were
then developed at the Faculty of Agricultural Engineering,
Raipur. The saving in cost of weeding was 60 %, and
saving in time was 65 % compared to manual weeding.
The improved jigs facilitated the production in 60 % of
time taken by traditional jigs. Taguchi method was used to
solve the problems related to improving the yield and
productivity. Taguchi’s design of experiments (DOE)
helped pin-point the source of yield and increase the
yielding efficiency. The DOE based on L8-orthogonal
array of Taguchi methodology were implemented. The
paper outlines Taguchi methodology to optimize the con-
trol factors having high and low settings in the production
of paddy weeder. The analysis of the results showed that
the optimal combination for minimum time consumption in
production process is maximum number of bending with
minimum welding operation and minimum number of
drilling operations. The optimized process by implemen-
tation of Taguchi methodology showed a reduction of
30 % in average production time.
& Ankitesh Shrivastava
ankiteshrivastava@gmail.com
1
Bhilai Institute of Technology, Durg, CG, India
2
Indira Gandhi Agriculture University, Raipur, CG, India
Keywords Paddy weeder  Solid works  Jigs and
fixtures  Design of experiments  Taguchi method
Introduction
Chhattisgarh is one of the major rice growing states of
India, known popularly as the rice bowl of the country.
Rice is the main crop of Chhattisgarh, cultivated in about
76 % of area under agriculture. Weeding and hoeing is
generally done 15–20 days after sowing. The weed should
be controlled and eliminated at their early stage. Depend-
ing upon the weed density, 20–30 % loss in grain yield is
quite usual which might increase up to 80 % if adequate
crop management practice is not observed. Rice crop is
very sensitive to weed competition in the early stage of
growth, and failure to control weeds in the first 3 weeks
after seeding reduces the yield by 50 %. Therefore, timely
weeding is very much essential for a good yield, and this
can only be achieved by using mechanical weeders which
perform simultaneous job of weeding and hoeing and can
reduce the time spent on weeding (man h), cost of weeding,
and drudgery involved in manual weeding.
Weeds are the plants which grow in an area where they
are not desired. Weed control in rice cultivation accounting
for major share in the cost of cultivation. According to Nag
and Dutt (1979), weeding accounts for about 25 % of the
total labor requirement (900–1200 man h/ha) during a
cultivation season. With the introduction of row seeding of
rice, interest in mechanical weeders is seen among the
farmers. The operating cost of the rotary paddy weeder was
Rs. 950/ha compared to Rs. 2300/ha for manual weeding
(Verma and Sahu 2007).
The human labor output capacity is increased by 8–10
times in weeding by the use of mechanical weeder (Mishra
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2 Paddy Water Environ (2017) 15:1–9
et al. 1993). The paddy weeder (Fig. 1) is a type of
equipment used to perform weeding operation and was
designed and developed at Faculty of Agricultural Engi-
neering workshop, Indira Gandhi Agricultural University,
Raipur. The paddy weeder was developed as an experi-
mental equipment, and hence, there was no proper well-
defined set of operations present, to facilitate its mass
production. With time, the equipment became successful,
and hence, there was a huge demand of it which needed to
be fulfilled.
Paddy weeder consists of five cutting blades welded
over a cylinder, which revolves due to rolling resistance
offered by the soil and hence performs the job of dislo-
cating the weeds and incorporate with soil efficiently.
Through time, the equipment proved its usefulness and
importance in fields. As a result, demand for the equipment
has seen a steep growth. Hence, to meet the growing
demand, the need is to enrich the manufacturing process
with some new and viable ideas so as to minimize the gap
between demand and supply.
While taking the production process of a product into
consideration, it was needed to consider the amount of
efforts laid on it by the manufacturer, and hence, the
quality of the product and the costs associated with it. The
various processes involved in the production of a product
may vary from industry to industry, but all of them do work
with the goal of maximization of production with minimum
time elapsed.
Mass production involves repetitive jobs, with the
desired quality standards, and a pre-defined time deadline
with it. Hence, to fulfill the requirement with less effort laid
and more profit earned from it, one needs to look forward
towards the advancements in the field of manufacturing.
Hence, there was a need to evaluate the set of operations
that were being performed for the production, for which a
detailed study of the processes was conducted. All the
Fig. 1 Close view of equipment
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operations involved were thoroughly executed one after the
other for a minimum period of 2 h. As the evaluation of the
entire production process was done, it was found that the
operations involved were consuming more time than
desired, which was not leading towards mass production
(Table 1). Hence, there was a need to optimize the entire
process, so as to ensure the proper utilization of the
available resources and mass production.
Taguchi method is a technique used to optimize the
processes involved in the production. The method is
helpful in reducing the time elapsed in the experimental
investigation, as it quite effective in investigation of sev-
eral factors on performance as well as the influence of each
factors on the process (Hosseinzadeh et al. 2011). Design
of experiments (DOE) was found to be an effective tool
that leads to the setting up of parameters at different levels
and that too of different combinations. Levels were set at
low and high so as to determine the optimum method for
production, and orthogonal arrays (OA) were constructed
which certainly depend upon the number of parameters
taken and number of levels chosen. Here, two levels and
six parameters were set, and L8 (i.e., eight experimental
trials) was taken (Fraley et al. 2007).
Materials and methods
Brief specification of paddy weeder
The paddy weeder taken under study was developed at
Indira Gandhi Agricultural University, Raipur. Brief
specification of weeder is shown in Table 2 (Mishra et al.
1993). Table 2 depicts the time elapsed in production of
paddy weeder by traditional methods.
Designing jigs and fixtures
Welding fixture
The jig developed had dimensions set for all the compo-
nents, and one plate was made horizontal to the base at a
distance of 110 mm from one end of the plate (say A),
having a width of 10 mm. Two vertical plates were placed
at a distance of 140 mm on the reference plate at both the
ends, one plate having a length of 120 mm and the other
plate having a length of 110 mm. At a distance of 390 mm,
two more vertical plates were placed at both the ends to
serve as a welding fixture for handle, one plate having a
length of 120 mm and the other plate having a length of
110 mm. At a distance of 440 mm from point A, a plate
was placed in z-direction so as to facilitate the welding of
float with rest of frame at an angle of 150°, and at a dis-
tance of 530 mm, second horizontal plate was placed,
Paddy Water Environ (2017) 15:1–9 3

Table 1 Time consumed/unit

S. no. Operations performed Avg. time consumed (in s)
by traditional method (average
time/operation = 2 h) 1 Marking MS plate(5 mm) 20
2 Cutting 60
3 Cutting float 20
4 Marking ? cutting float pad 50
5 Bending 60
6 Drill marking 70
7 Drilling (14 drills/piece) 77
8 Blade cutting 180
9 Welding (temporary ? permanent) 210
10 Heat treatment 60
11 Pipe cutting ? drilling 30
12 Nut and bolt tightening 40
Total time elapsed 877

Table 2 Specifications of paddy weeder With the application of pressure, the plates were bent,
Particulars Rotary paddy weeder
ensured fast and easy operation, and the quality of the
product maintained as per the desired standard.
Overall length (mm) 1520 A solution was needed for replacing welding with the
Overall width (mm) 500 bending operation, and hence, a jig was designed to serve
Overall height (mm) 950 for this purpose. The plates were bent with the help of a set
Width of cut (mm) 120 of jigs and fixtures, and the plates were placed on the
Actual field capacity (ha/h) 0.0136 elevated surface (Fig. 5) and pressed with the help of
Field efficiency (%) 82 bending machine, hence creating a bend of 90° and elim-
Operating cost (Rs./ha) 950 inating the need of welding operation to remarkable extent.
In ideal cutting operations, the punch penetrates the
material to a depth of equal to one-third of its thickness
before fracture occurs and forces an equal portion of
which has a length of 60 mm. Finally, at 590 mm, last material into die opening. That portion of thickness so
vertical plates were placed, each having a length of 90 mm penetrated will be highly burnished, appearing on the cut
(Fig. 2). edge as a bright band around the entire contour of the cut.
Another set of jigs and fixtures were developed to When the cutting clearance is not sufficient, additional
facilitate the bending of float, and the MS plates cut after bands of metal must be cut before complete separation is
the marking operation were placed on the elevated corners accomplished. Width of the cut band is an indication of the
(Fig. 3), and the other fixture was made to be fixed on the hardness of the material, provided that the die clearance
bending machine (Fig. 4), with the help of nuts and bolts. and material thickness are constant. Wider the cut band,

Fig. 2 Designed welding

fixture

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4 Paddy Water Environ (2017) 15:1–9

Fig. 3 Designed fixture for

bending float

systematic modeling, analysis, and optimization of the

machining process. Taguchi method includes selection of
parameters, experimental design, conducting an experi-
ment, data analysis, determining the optimal combination,
and verification. Taguchi method uses a special design of
OAs where the experimental results are transformed into
signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio as the measure of the quality
characteristic (Radovanovic et al. 2014).
The processes involved in the execution of Taguchi’s
experiment are as follows (Antony and Antony 2001):
Step 1 Formulation of the problem—the success of any
experiment is dependent on a full understanding of
Fig. 4 Side view of the jig
nature of the problem.
Step 2 Identification of the output performance charac-
softer is the material. Hence, the jig was developed for teristics most relevant to the problem.
cutting the teeth for paddy weeder, by working on a power Step 3 Identification of control factors, noise factors, and
press. The designed die is shown in Fig. 6. signal factors (if any). Control factors are those which
can be controlled under normal production conditions.
Taguchi experiment Noise factors are those which are either too difficult or
too expensive to control under normal production
Taguchi method of experimental design (Ross 1988; conditions. Signal factors are those which affect the
Phadke 1989) is a relatively simple and powerful tool for mean performance of the process.

Fig. 5 Designed jigs for

bending of plates

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Paddy Water Environ (2017) 15:1–9 5

Fig. 6 Designed die for press

working

Step 4 Selection of factor levels, possible interactions, Table 3 Control factors and their range of settings for experiment
and the degrees of freedom associated with each factor Control factors Labels Level-1 Level-2
and the interaction effects.
Step 5 Design of an appropriate OA. Material A M.S. S.S
Step 6 Preparation of the experiment. Metal cutting B 11 05
Step 7 Running of the experiment with appropriate data Blade cutting C 08 01
collection. Bending D 01 07
Step 8 Statistical analysis and interpretation of experi- Drilling E 14 06
mental results. Welding F 12 06
Step 9 Undertaking a confirmatory run of the
experiment. experimental trials. The configuration of OAs is deter-
Taguchi’s approach is entirely based on the statistical mined with respect to total degrees of freedom of the tar-
DOE. For Taguchi optimization, several parameters were geted function. The degree of freedom (degree of freedom
found to be effective, which had direct impact on the 8–1 = 7) for L8 OA can be more than or at least equal to
production cycle, and those relevant parameters were set up the determined process parameters. The surface roughness
as the control factors for the production process. The and roundness error values were measured via the experi-
objective of the whole exercise was to minimize the pro- mental design for the each combination of the control
duction time of the paddy weeder (with minimum varia- factors. The determination of the quality characteristics of
tion). The control factors are the ones which can be easily the measured control factors was provided by signal-to-
controlled. It uses an OA to study the entire process a noise (S/N) ratios (Çiçek et al. 2012).
number of experiments. The input characteristics chosen The selection of optimal settings depends upon the
for experiments and their relative high and low settings are objective of experiment or the nature of problem under
given in Table 3. study. In this study, the objective was to minimize the
production process time. In Taguchi method, the objective
is to identify the factor settings which yield the lowest
Results and discussion sound to noise ratio (SNR), and these settings would cer-
tainly produce a more reliable product. The signal-to-noise
Developing the design matrix (S/N) ratios, which are log functions of desired output,
serve as the objective functions for optimization, and help
In the Taguchi method, OA can provide an effective in data analysis and the prediction of the optimum results.
experimental performance with a minimum number of The signal-to-noise ratio measures the sensitivity of the

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quality investigated to those uncontrollable factors (error) The SNR values thus obtained were established categori-
in the experiment. cally and were analyzed for both the high and low settings
The objective of the experiments is to optimize the of the control factors (Table 4).
production process of paddy weeder (Fig. 9) and to find out Table 5 illustrates the SNR values (Eq. 1) correspond-
the minimum time in completing an operation. After the ing to each trial condition. The values obtained from each
control factors with their high and low settings are identi- trial were substituted in Eq. 1, and the values thus obtained
fied, the emphasis was on the settings which would best were termed the SNR values of that respective operation.
dampen the effects of noise factors produced during the The normal plot for residuals (Figs. 8, 9) shows the time
operation of paddy weeder. According to Taguchi, there is elapsed in process was designed with the help of Design
always an optimal combination of factor settings which Expert software.
counters the effect of noise efficiently. In order to minimize The average SNR values at each levels were taken:
the effects of noise factors, timings of all the experiments Average SNR at level 1 for factor ‘‘C’’ =
were taken. Time started the moment the worker starts the 1
marking operation, followed by cutting, bending, and SNRC1 ¼  fð58:9007Þ þ ð59:3356Þ
4
drilling, and stopwatch was stopped when the final welding þ ð57:1345Þ þ ð54:8540Þg
operation was done (Fig. 7).
¼ 57:5562:
The choice of OA is an important step in the process, as
it allows the examiner to compute the effects by minimum Similarly, SNR at level 2 for factor ‘‘C’’ was calculated:
number of experimental trials. In the present analysis, L8 1
OA with six columns and eight rows was used. This array SNRC2 ¼  fð57:2784Þ þ ð56:1304Þ
4
can handle two-level parameters. Hence, only eight
þð58:2339Þ þ ð55:9661Þg
experiments were required to study the production process.
The experimental layout of the OA is shown in Table 5. ¼ 56:9022:
Once the optimal settings are established, it is the need of Effect estimate ¼ SNRC2  SNRC1
the hour to take the confirmation trial, before proceeding
¼ 56:9022  ð57:5562Þ ¼ 0:654:
further.
In general, the SN ratio for quality characteristics is Similarly, the values for all the control factors were cal-
based on mean squared deviation and can be calculated as culated and tabulated, and the values of SNR at both the
given in Eq. 1 (Taguchi et al. 2004; Fowlkes and Crevel-
ing, 1995; Fratilia and Caizar 2011). The SNR related to Table 4 Experimental layout
smaller-the-better (STB) was used. For STB quality char-
Factors/interactions C D E F A B Time consumed (in s)
acteristics, the SNR is given by the following equation:
Trial no.
SNR ¼ 10  logðRðY 2 Þ=nÞ; ð1Þ
1. 1 1 1 1 1 1 896, 866
where n is the number of values at each trial condition and 2. 1 1 1 2 2 2 648, 662
Y is each observed value. 3. 1 2 2 1 1 2 720, 718
In situations where there is a feasibility to perform 4. 1 2 2 2 2 1 550, 556
multiple runs, for each of the proposed experimental runs 5. 2 1 2 1 2 1 734, 728
provided by design matrix. Experimental run with different 6. 2 1 2 2 1 2 639, 642
settings proved to be helpful in reducing the amount of 7. 2 2 1 1 2 2 820, 812
time consumed. Two runs were performed for each of the 8. 2 2 1 2 1 1 630, 627
experiments, so as to get a brighter idea about the process.
Table 5 SNR table
Trial no. SNR

1. -58.9007
2. -59.3356
3. -57.1345
4. -54.8540
5. -57.2784
6. -56.1304
7. -58.2339
8. -55.9661
Fig. 7 Paddy weeder manufactured by traditional methods

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Paddy Water Environ (2017) 15:1–9 7

4.00

99

95 2.00
90
80
70
0.00
50
30
20
10 -2.00
5

1
-4.00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
-2.00 -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00

Fig. 10 Residuals against run condition

Fig. 8 Normal plot for residuals
dominant characteristic is welding operation, followed by
drilling, bending, metal cutting, and material and blade
900 cutting. In order to study the effect of variables and the
possible interactions between them in a minimum number
of trials, the Taguchi method of experimental design was
800
adopted. The new optimized production process (Table 7)
includes (A) the material as mild steel (M.S.), (B) 11 times
of metal cutting, (C) 1 time of blade cutting, (D) 07 times
700
of bending operation, (E) 06 times of drilling/punching
operation, and (F) 06 times of welding operation. With the
600 above setting, it is evident that the parameters set at their
optimum levels ensure significant improvement in the
response function. Since there are only two levels, all the
500 parameters will have linear effect, and for non-linear
effects, it is therefore needed to select more levels.
500 600 700 800 900

Fig. 9 Time elapsed in operations Determination of optimal control factor settings

levels are shown in Table 6. Figure 10 represents the
residual values and the values of elements for each
experimental run. Taguchi analysis is performed based on
‘‘average-of-results’’ methodology. Table 6 represents the
average SNR values at low (level 1) and high (level 2)
levels, and the effects of each parameters on SNR, namely
SNR-1 for low level settings and SNR-2 for high level
settings.
Figure 11 shows the line graph of main effects with their
parameters and their variation between the high and low
levels (SNR values from Table 6). It shows that the most
A total of five equipments were manufactured with the
obtained settings, and the average production time was
recorded as 10.11 min, which certainly shows an improve-
ment of around 30 % on the average production time.
Conclusion
The process parameters that affect the production of paddy
weeder were listed and hence were tested with low and
high values for the operation, and a complete DOE was

Table 6 Average SNR table

Factors C D E F A B

SNR-1 -57.5562 -57.9112 -58.1090 -57.8868 -57.0329 -57.0297

SNR-2 -56.9022 -56.5471 -56.3493 -56.5715 -57.6085 -57.4286
Effect Estimate 0.654 1.3640 1.7596 1.3152 -0.5756 -0.3989

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8 Paddy Water Environ (2017) 15:1–9

Fig. 11 Effect of parameters

Table 7 Optimal control factor settings determination of important factors affecting operation,
performance and cost, and quantitative recommendations
Control factors Optimum level
for design parameters which achieve the lowest cost, high-
Material Level 1 quality solutions.
Metal cutting Level 1
Blade cutting Level 2
Bending Level 2
Drilling Level 2 References
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