Application of Taguchi Method for Optimization of Parameter in Improving Soybean Cracking Process on Dry Process of tempeh Production

Abstract

Taguchi method is a Design of Experiment approach for parameter optimization of a process. The purpose of this study is to determine the optimum parameters and the most influential parameters in the process of soybean cracking in the dry process of tempeh production. In the process of cracking the dry soybeans found a defect of 14.5%. after applying the Taguchi method and obtaining the optimum parameters, the defect on the dry process of cracking the dry soybeans is reduced to 6.6%. Determination of parameters and levels, objective functions, orthogonal array, signal-to-noise ratio, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) will be done in this study to improve the performance of the soy-cracking process. In this study there are three parameters used in conducting experiments with Taguchi method, three parameters namely distance between stones, hopper outlet diameter, and sun-drying duration. The results of this study are: distance between stones with setting optimum 1mm and percentage contribution 13%; hopper outlet diameter with setting optimum 25mm and percentage contribution 85%; and sun-drying duration with drying optimum 1 day and percentage contribution 2%. the most influential parameter is the hopper outlet diameter in the soybean cracking process, as it determines the soybean discharge that goes into the cracking phase.