Yield Improvement for Blood Glucose Strip by Taguchi Dynamic Approach

This is a study applying Taguchi dynamic approach to improvement the yield for a blood glucose strip (BGS) manufacturing process. Usually, a company determines desired manufacturing parameters based on experiments for pharmaceutical characteristic and the trial-and-error method. However, the experiments are complicated and difficult for practitioners to understand. Several control factors are considered using an L 18 orthogonal array to explore the functional relationship between the patient-generated blood glucose values and standard clinical glucose concentration. Based on the SN ratio calculation and two-step optimization procedure, the optimal conditions for achieving precision clinical blood glucose tests are proposed. The implementation results show the yield rate, precision and stability of the blood glucose strip were significantly improved. Through patient based blood glucose monitoring, a great deal of the medical costs will be reduced.