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Cultural Insights 285
eliminated by some manner of self-blindfolding (somewhat in the spirit of kamikaze)--
witness the following statement in a recent journal paper:
Interaction was the most confusing element of the Taguchi methodology to the team members.
Some of the assumptions and decisions made were based purely on the team members’ instinct,
rather than scientific foundations. I found that this point of the project was the most divisive to the
team. In subsequent Taguchi’s experiments, I have favoured the use of non-interacting orthogonal
array tables such as L 12 , L 18 and L 36 . 49

Simply by choosing Taguchi arrays that are usable only under the condition of ab-
sence of interaction and useless otherwise, one can get rid of troublesome natural
interactions in a stroke! That is a most remarkable revelation of the heights of faith to
be found among Taguchi followers.

18.6.4 Indoctrination and personal cult
The generation of Taguchi faithful first emerged in the early 1980s among nonstatisti-
8
cians. Before their first serious treatment in an academic context, Taguchi methods as
depicted in professional magazines 21−24 tended to be studded with staggering claims
sometimes shrouded in tantalizing and almost mystical depictions -- a mix of orien-
tal inscrutability in experimentation schemes and the awesome reality of Japanese
competitiveness in product quality. In addition, the honorifics ‘Doctor’ and ‘Profes-
sor’were indispensable whenever Genichi Taguchi’s name was mentioned, a practice
that is sustained even today in many books and journals. Intentionally or otherwise,
such a build-up of reverence for an oriental master has led to a cult of sorts for a
larger-than-life image. In fact, it is notable that a feature of Taguchi’s works is the use
of Socratic dialogs between a master and a disciple to clarify ideas and techniques;
another is the repeated use of case studies in place of general formulations to present
a subject, very much in the ancient tradition of teaching by parables.
Meanwhile, the American Suppliers Institute was set up in Michigan for the pri-
mary purpose of training automobile suppliers. It functioned as the US Center for
Taguchi Methods for years, running a stream of short training courses on the subject.
It has also been running annual Taguchi symposia -- with published proceedings 50 --
at which one speaker after another would bear witness to the power of Taguchi meth-
ods in improving quality and reliability, vouch for the role of Taguchi methods in
securing huge savings for companies, and tell countless other impressive success sto-
ries. (Understandably no accounts of failure ever got a chance to reach the symposia.)
The fervor in fact even spread to the opposite shores of the Atlantic, where papers
on Taguchi methods in the ASQC’s Quality Progress 9,51 were reprinted in Quality As-
surance, the journal of the UK Institute of Quality Assurance; in a typically British
manner a Taguchi Club was duly formed, and Taguchi courses and conferences soon
started to spread across the Continent. 52,53 It is worth noting that no corresponding
movements took hold in the Orient, although Taguchi’s works had been well studied
and cited in mainland China, Taiwan and India years before the Americans became
aware of them. 54,55
The Taguchi camp, after more than a decade of self-reinforcement of its beliefs, is on
the whole quite unperturbed by criticisms of weaknesses in the methods’ theoretical