Abstract: | Taguchi has presented an approach to quality improvement in which reduction of deviation from the target value is the guiding principle. In this approach any measured value x of a product characteristic X brings a loss to consumer in general, where the loss is expressed as a quadratic form with respect to the difference between the measured value x and the target value T of a product characteristic. Then, it is natural to reject the lot which may bring a large loss to consumer. This concept induces us to construct new variable sampling plans based on the Taguchi's loss criterion. In this article, a design procedure of the sampling plans for assuring the loss in the Taguchi's method is proposed. Some numerical results based on the proposed design procedures are illustrated. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 44: 591–603 (1997) |