The Taguchi approach to quality engineering places a great deal of emphasis on minimising variation as the main means of improving quality. The idea is to design products and processes whose performance is not affected by outside conditions and to build this in during the development and design stage through the use of experimental design. The method includes a set of tables that enable main variables and interactions to be investigated in a minimum number of trials.

Though the concept is reasonably straightforward, choosing the most appropriate table and interpreting the results can be more difficult. There is the danger in using Taguchi of drawing the wrong conclusion. Therefore it is always advisable to check any results from a Taguchi matrix; for instance, if the result indicates some strong effects, it is best to check these in a full matrix or one off runs using one-variable-at-a-time method.

The most important contribution of the Taguchi technique is the concept of Robust design.