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Industrial Engineer here, This is not a buzz word, this is the name of the tool we use. 4/4 companies Ive been at used Poke-Yoke, Poka-Yoke, or Error Proofing

Industrial Engineer here, This is not a buzz word, this is the name of the tool we use. 4/4 companies Ive been at used Poke-Yoke, Poka-Yoke, or Error Proofing interchangeably. And while I dont own a Japanese car, I can verify the 'common sense' ideas had a resurgence as Toyota applied a process to these principles. It seems nearly every company MUST apply them or they are uncompetitive. From a plant with 50 employees to a fortune 500 plant, I have not seen these 'misapplied'. Only excellence. I find outsiders are pessimistic and are unaware that these plants are using SPC and have process engineers looking to optimize daily.

philwelch 8y ago
I'm not thinking about actual manufacturers when I think about misapplying cool-sounding Japanese manufacturing concepts. I'm more thinking about other businesses where they basically cargo-cult manufacturing ideas without actually thinking about whether they work (which is ironic because continually thinking about whether your processes work is the key part of the process.) I'm mostly struck at how error-proofing is a seemingly obvious idea, and yet it's still worth writing and talking about. That makes me think most of the value is in the execution and not in anything that can be written down.
LeifCarrotson 8y ago
I'm also an engineer building industrial automation systems. And I've sold dozens with poka yokes, done kaizen reviews (improvements), and used scanners/plant-machine communication for kanban (JIT/lean manufacturing). I think the important thing to note here is not that when you use the Japanese word, it becomes a process, a tool, a requirement you can mandate and sell - not just common sense. If you just call it idiot-proofing, people too often reject additional cost, process time, and complexity. If that sensor and part test are there because those are the poka yokes so you can't load it backwards, people don't push back as much.

philwelch 8y ago

I'm not thinking about actual manufacturers when I think about misapplying cool-sounding Japanese manufacturing concepts. I'm more thinking about other businesses where they basically cargo-cult manufacturing ideas without actually thinking about whether they work (which is ironic because continually thinking about whether your processes work is the key part of the process.) I'm mostly struck at how error-proofing is a seemingly obvious idea, and yet it's still worth writing and talking about. That makes me think most of the value is in the execution and not in anything that can be written down.

LeifCarrotson 8y ago

I'm also an engineer building industrial automation systems. And I've sold dozens with poka yokes, done kaizen reviews (improvements), and used scanners/plant-machine communication for kanban (JIT/lean manufacturing). I think the important thing to note here is not that when you use the Japanese word, it becomes a process, a tool, a requirement you can mandate and sell - not just common sense. If you just call it idiot-proofing, people too often reject additional cost, process time, and complexity. If that sensor and part test are there because those are the poka yokes so you can't load it backwards, people don't push back as much.