Development of coloured glazes for tile applications using Taguchi's method

The development of coloured glazes produced for ceramic tiles is normally based on intuitive methods, where a lot of trials are usually necessary to obtain the desired colour.The aim of this paper was to propose a new approach to develop coloured glazes produced for tile applications using Taguchi's method. With this method, the best producing conditions can be achieved by an appropriate selection of the controlled factors – the pigments – and their levels – the quantities of the pigments – to obtain the desired colour and production costs were thus reduced.Two standard colours were selected under the conditions of the customer. The experience was planned and the results were treated according to the requirements described by Taguchi's method. The trials were selected by an orthogonal array of smaller resolution. Using Taguchi's method, the number of trials was substantially reduced; consequently the production costs and the loss to society also.