Bendix Company Produces Replacement Brake Pads for Automobiles

Essay

Bendix Company produces replacement brake pads for automobiles. The thickness of the abrasive material on the pads is critical to their performance. If the pads are too thin, they will wear prematurely, and if they are too thick, they will fit improperly resulting in excess brake noise and vibration. Bendix has determined that its costs are $500 when a nonconforming pad is installed in a customer's vehicle. The target thickness for the pads is 12 mm. It test-measures the thickness of the abrasive on a sample of five pads; the results are given in the table below.
Required:
Compute the total quality loss for Bendix using the Taguchi loss function.