Dr. Genechi Taguchi was born January 21, 1924 in Tokamachi Japan. Taguchi studied engineering and after World War II worked at the Ministry of Public Health and welfare with statistician Matosaburo Masuyama who collaborated with R.A. Fisher at the Indian Statistical Institute and taught design of experiments at the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Taguchi later worked for the Electrical Communications Laboratory in quality control, consulted for many large corporations, and worked with such notable quality gurus as R.A. Fisher and Walter Shewhart at the Indian Statistical Institute. Dr. Taguchi received his doctorate in 1962 from Kyushu University and would later develop the “loss function”, his concept of robustness in the quality of design, and the Taguchi method for design of experiments. The emphasis of Taguchi’s teaching is to develop processes and products that are robust and thus produce conforming product and reduce loss.