Jidoka

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Jidoka (a.k.a. autonomation) a term used in Lean manufacturing meaning "automation with a human touch." It is a quality control process used in the Toyota Production System which applies the following four principles.

Detect the abnormality.
Stop.
Fix or correct the immediate condition.
Investigate the root cause and install a countermeasure.

For JIT - Just-in-time - systems, it is absolutely vital to produce with zero defects, or else these defects can disrupt the production process - or the orderly flow of work.

JIT and Lean Manufacturing are always searching for targets for continuous improvement in its quest for quality improvements, finding and eliminating the causes of problems so they do not continually crop up.

Jidoka involves the automatic detection of errors or defects during production. When a defect is detected the halting of the production forces immediate attention to the problem.

The halting causes slowed production but it is believed that this helps to detect a problem earlier and avoids the spread of bad practices. (JBLL, Jun18, 2006)

The word is a loan word from the Japanese language. In Japanese, the term "automation" is written using three kanji: "Ji" meaning "Self-", "Dou" meaning "movement" (self-movement, meaning automation or automotive) and "Ka" meaning "-ization", (自動化). In the Toyota Production System, the second letter is replaced with another "Dou" meaning "work"(働), which is a character derived by adding a radical representing "human" to the original "Dou".