農作物栽培におけるタグチメソッドの適用

抄録

Taguchi's method has been used for finding the optimal operating conditions and/or the solutions to product design by desensitizing the influence of noise factors. We can frequently find success stories in the manufacturing industry ; however, they are rarely found in the food industry. It is important to achieve robustness not only in the manufacturing industry but also in the food industry. If so, every customer can regularly obtain high quality (tasty) products. AHJIKAN CO., LTD has researched cultivation conditions of sweet potatos, corn and Shitake mushrooms through robust parameter designs and the MT system. Sweet potatos and corn are grown in natural setting, while the Shitake mushrooms are grown in a greenhouse, to match natural conditions. These agricultural experiments that use quality engineering offer a new challenge. We show examples of sweet potato, corn and Shitake mushroom cultivation. A Key challenge is that it takes a long time to obtain complete data in those experiments, which we overcome by introducing new techniques.