Jidoka: The Toyota Principle of Building Quality into the Process

By Mohammed Hamed Ahmed Soliman

Yet many companies focus on the mechanisms of implementation--one-piece flow, pull production, takt time, standard work, kanban--without linking those mechanisms back to the pillars that hold up the entire system. JIT is fairly well understood, but jidoka is key to making the entire system stick. A lot of failed implementations can be traced back to not building this second pillar.
 

Jidoka is one of the main pillars of the TPS. The TPS is presented as a house with two pillars. One pillar represents just-in-time (JIT), and the other pillar the concept of Jidoka. Take away any of the pillars holding up the roof, and the entire system will collapse. Take out quality, and there is no TPS. Jidoka is a principle of building quality for customers—not inspecting quality. Building quality mean making it right the first time. If you are making defective products or using unacceptable quality standards and filtering these defects out through an inspection system, there is no building quality—and no Jidoka. You are just catching the mistakes made in the manufacturing process. This cost a lot of money and resources and puts the business at risk.

• Language: English
• Publisher: personal-lean.org
• Release date: Oct 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9798223889663

Mohammed Hamed Ahmed Soliman

Mohammed Hamed Ahmed Soliman is an industrial engineer, consultant, university lecturer, operational excellence leader, and author. He works as a lecturer at the American University in Cairo and as a consultant for several international industrial organizations. Soliman earned a Bachelor's of science in Engineering and a Master's degree in Quality Management. He earned post-graduate degrees in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management. He holds numerous certificates in management, industry, quality, and cost engineering. For most of his career, Soliman worked as a regular employee for various industrial sectors. This included crystal-glass making, fertilizers, and chemicals. He did this while educating people about the culture of continuous improvement. Soliman has more than 15 years of experience and proven track record of achieving high levels of operational excellence to a broad range of business operations including manufacturing, service and healthcare. He has led several improvement projects within leading organizations and defined a lot of savings in the manufacturing wastes stream. Soliman has lectured at Princess Noura University and trained the maintenance team in Vale Oman Pelletizing Company. He has been lecturing at The American University in Cairo for 8 years and has designed and delivered 40 leadership and technical skills enhancement training modules. In the past 4 years, Soliman's lectures have been popular and attracted a large audience of over 200,000 people according to SlideShare's analysis.. His research is one of the most downloaded works on the Social Science Research Network, which is run by ELSEVIER. His research is one of the most downloaded works on the Social Science Research Network, which is run by ELSEVIER. Soliman is a senior member at the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers and a member with the Society for Engineering and Management Systems. He has published more than 60 publications including articles in peer reviewed academic journals and international magazines. His writings on lean manufacturing, leadership, productivity, and business appear in Industrial Engineers, Lean Thinking, Industrial Management, and Sage Publications. Soliman's blog is www.personal-lean.org.

Book preview

Introduction

Jidoka is one of the main pillars of the TPS. The TPS is presented as a house with two pillars. One pillar represents just-in-time (JIT), and the other pillar the concept of Jidoka. Take away any of the pillars holding up the roof, and the entire system will collapse. Take out quality, and there is no TPS. Jidoka is a principle of building quality for customers—not inspecting quality. Building quality mean making it right the first time. If you are making defective products or using unacceptable quality standards and filtering these defects out through an inspection system, there is no building quality—and no Jidoka. You are just catching the mistakes made in the manufacturing process. This cost a lot of money and resources and puts the business at risk.

Yet many companies focus on the mechanisms of implementation—one-piece flow, pull production, takt time, standard work, kanban—without linking those mechanisms back to the pillars that hold up the entire system. JIT is fairly well understood, but Jidoka is key to making the entire system stick. A lot of failed implementations can be traced back to not building this second pillar.

Going back into history

The principle's origin goes back to 1902 when Sakichi Toyoda invented a simple but ingenious mechanism that detected a broken thread and shut off an automatic loom. That invention allowed one operator to oversee the operation of up to a dozen looms while maintaining perfect quality. But the system goes much further.

Detect and Signal Abnormalities

To build quality into the process machines have to be designed to detect defects when they occur and automatically stop production so an employee can fix a problem before the defect continues downstream.

One of Taiichi Ohno's famous quotes is get the factory to work for the business the same way the human body works for the person. This is to say that when your body needs more blood, you don't have to tell the heart to pump. It does so autonomic ally. Jidoka is the concept that you need to design processes and systems so that when errors occur, people respond immediately in support. So, at midnight on a Saturday, how do your systems respond to errors? Do the errors come to light immediately and problem solving begin or does everything wait until Monday? Jidoka would drive you to ensure that abnormalities are made immediately visible at all times and it would drive you to ensure the associates who respond to that abnormality have the capability and authority to fix it.

Toyota uses an andon cords or pull cords which can bring the entire assembly line to halt. Every team member has the authority to stop the line every time they see something out of standard. As Liker explained in Toyota Way, "jidoka referred to as automation-equipment endowed with human intelligent to stop itself when it has a