On 17 October 2017, Dr. Rozzeta Dolah was invited to present a talk at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA on “Variation Measurement and Improvement in Industry/ Engineering Application”. The talk was attended by MIT professors, undergraduate and graduate students from engineering faculty. As there is a very little guidance for the practitioners/ engineers to select an appropriate strategy of robust measurement systems – What, When & Where to use Taguchi method versus other experimental design method of eliminating noise and variations, the talk has provided a solid underpinning of Taguchi method in controlling variation for measurement system. This is crucial to determine the degree of optimization, resolution required, time and costs constraints, nature of the problem, and robustness approach for a given problem in a process. The talk covered the wide spectrum of robust quality engineering such as essential parameters in data analysis, control of variation in measurement process, controlling defects through six sigma methodology and variation elimination. These elements undoubtedly provide the guidelines of what a robust measurement system should be in ensuring the measurement to represent the measurand. Therefore, the gap between theoretical uncertainty engineering and the measurement in real practice is reduced. Measurement errors, difficulties in determining the noise parameters, and confusion between the appropriate strategy to use are among the questions arised from the audience.

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Dr. Rozzeta Dolah CEng MIET is a senior lecturer at UTM Razak School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. She is currently pursuing her post doctoral at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, USA in Mechanical Engineering department under Microfluidics and Nanofluidics Research laboratory. Her research interest involves renewable energy in biomass conversion and nanotechnology transport phenomena using robust quality engineering including Taguchi method optimization. She is a Chartered Engineer registered in UK, with Ph.D specialized in quality engineering from Meiji University, Japan. Her experience in quality engineering was gained under the direct tutelage of the pioneer of Taguchi method, son of the late Dr. Taguchi. Prior to being in academic field, she has many years of experience as process engineer in industry, where she involved in multiple Black Belt Six Sigma projects, and solved problems through defects and variation elimination using MINITAB. As a member of Japan’s Quality Engineering Society, she led many quality improvement projects through the implementation of Taguchi Method (Robust Quality Engineering), Design of Experiments (DOE), and Lean Six Sigma.