In 2004, the Commission on Methods for Testing Photographic Gelatin, whose members represent three gelatin manufacturers and three photographic film manufacturers in Japan's photographic and gelatin industries (PAGI), used Taguchi methods to study a new method of testing photographic gelatin by measuring colloidal silver growth. The new testing method was the result of parameter design, in which the work of conducting L18 experiments was shared among the six member manufacturers. The new testing method improved the signal-to-noise ratio by 19 db in comparison with the starting conditions, and the number of experiments required in the study was less than a quarter of the number in a similar previous study. The Commission is preparing to establish the new testing method as a standard including the quality engineering concepts of signal-to-noise ratio and sensitivity.

Fulminant hepatitis progresses so rapidly that the progress of the disease can be recognized by the hour. As a standard of suitability for liver transplantation, a distance value of D2=1000, referenced to a known unit space, is being considered. This study examined eight fulminant hepatitis cases to find whether the development of fulminant hepatic failure is predictable by using laboratory data obtained immediately after onset. The prognostic formula developed by Yoshiba using multivariate analysis and the formula developed by the Research Group for Intractable Hepatitis both predict fulminant failure if λ>0, and give a non-fulminant prognosis if λ<0. The values of λ calculated by these formulas were simultaneously positive in only two of the eight cases studied, and both were negative in four cases. The values of D2 exceeded 1000 in all eight cases. The λ formulas are seen to have limited diagnostic capability and to be inferior to the Mahalanobis-Taguchi method.

In the diagnosis of disease, traditional oriental medicine stresses questioning of the patient, and adds further observations to reach a comprehensive conclusion. Patient questioning yields multidimensional data covering some 200 or more items, and while an ideal healthy subject, from the viewpoint of traditional oriental medicine, preferably gives all-zero data, a disadvantage is that in the inverse matrix analysis, the mean and standard deviation cannot be obtained in the unit space. As a solution to these problems, this study applied the MTA methodology, using an adjoint matrix. An analysis was made of the diagnosis of patient recognition of what are referred to as blood diseases in traditional oriental medicine, by defining the values of all items as zero for healthy subjects and using data with many zero standard deviations as a unit space. Accurate diagnostic results were obtained.

The MT system has been reported to be effective in determining the severity of liver disease, but identifying the type of liver disease instead of just the level of severity remained an unsolved problem. This paper considers diagnostic methods that seek to use the MT system to identify both the severity and type of disease in liver patients who require special types of physical examination. The results suggest the possibility of a diagnosis that identifies the type of disease,although not through the Mahalanobis distance alone. Methods of diagnosing the type of disease are presented.

To demonstrate its effectiveness, the hypothesis that an effective way to introduce quality engineering into an enterprise is 'actions speak louder than words'was tested through use in the Sekisui Chemical Group. The 'actions speak louder than words' system uses quality engineering to get results in production problem-solving situations, calculates the monetary effect of the results to appeal to managers and engineers alike, thereby increases the level of interest in or recognition of quality engineering, and takes advantage of the increased level of interest or recognition to move directly into an organized and systemic deployment of quality engineering. In this study, it was verified that 'actions speak louder than words' is an effective method of introducing quality engineering into enterprises that are using it for the first time.