A data mining approach to dynamic multiple responses in Taguchi experimental design

To simultaneously optimize the parameter robust design of dynamic multiple responses is difficult due to product complexity; however, the design is what determines most of the production time, cost, and quality. Although several methods tackling this problem have been published, they have proven unable to effectively resolve the situation if a system has continuous control factors. This work proposes a data mining approach, consisting of four stages based on artificial neural networks (ANN), desirability functions, and a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm to resolve the problems of dynamic parameter design with multiple responses. An ANN is employed to build a system’s response function model. Desirability functions are used to evaluate the performance measures of multiple responses. A SA algorithm is applied to obtain the best factor settings through the response function model. By using the proposed approach, the obtained best factor settings can be any values within their upper and lower bounds so that the system’s multiple responses have the least sensitivity to noise factors along the magnitude of the signal factor. An example from the literature is illustrated to confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.