Applying taguchi method in industrial rubber?s vulcanization process

Under increasingly competitive conditions, for the purpose of not being behind their competitiors and defending their market share companies have to apply quality improvement and cost minimizing policies and techniqueson their process.Taguchi, emphasizes the importance of using experimental design in defining process parameters as a way of minimizing quality costs. In this paper, sources of variation which cause quality problems are determined and Taguchi method which has an ability to optimize of quality characteristics and has been applied quite often in the developed and developing countries industrial applications., is applied. In order to prove the improvement and efficiency of the method, an industrial application in automotive sector has been carried out.In this study, Experimental Design and Taguchi Approach have been explained in detail and Laspar Co. Bursa Plant has been carried out under real industrial conditions in rubber?s vulcanization process. In this application, rubber?s vulcanization activity has been selected as the most important quality characteristic and tensile strength to maximize. In the application, firstly factors and levels, which have effect on tensile quality characteristic, were defined and than appropriate orthogonal array was selected and finally experiments were done in each trial 5 times. The experimental results were analysed with equation table an anova techniques and taguchi techniques. At the and, by using confidence experiments it has been tried to identify important factors and levels on tensile. At the last section of the study, results of the application has been criticized and discussed.Key Words: Taguchi Method, Taguchi Orthogonal Arrays, Graphical Representation, Rubber Industry