Improving the Quality of Medium Scale Enterprises in Nigeria Using Taguchi Method: The Fashion Industry

Abstract

This work involves the improvement of the quality of dressmaking in a medium-sized business in Nigeria. To investigate the quality characteristics of dresses in relation to the specific objectives, Taguchi's orthogonal array, signal-to-noise ratio, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used. Three factors were identified in the analysis: fabric type, drawing- cutting duration, and sewing speed. As a result, an appropriate L9 orthogonal array was chosen, and experiments were carried out. The results of the experiments revealed that fabric type has the highest signal to noise ratio of 77.7742 at level 3, drawing and cutting has the highest signal to noise ratio of 77.9484 at level 3, and sewing speed factor has the highest signal to noise ratio of 79.4155 at level 2. Furthermore, the highest mean signal to noise ratio of fabric type is 25.9242 at level 3, drawing and cutting duration is 25.9828, and sewing speed has the highest average signal to noise ratio of 26.4718 at level 2. The analysis of the results obtained by ANOVA shows that, sewing speed has the greatest influence on dress quality (38.7 percent). To improve the quality of the manufactured product, the parameter setting recommended in this study is A3B3C2 and the Taguchi model should be used both in the beginning and end of the dress production process.