Oct 27 2017
Jidoka At GE And Amazon | Marc Onetto | Planet Lean
“[…]The principle of Jidoka applies everywhere, especially if we come down to its fundamental intent: preventing bad quality from going down the line and impacting the customer, understanding the causes of a problem as it happens, and giving the employee the authority (and autonomy) to stop the line when an issue occurs.”Sourced Planet Lean
Michel Baudin‘s comments: The experience of an executive like Marc Onetto is always a good read. What he recounts, however, has everything to do with the TPS approach to quality and nothing to do with Jidoka. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate its value. I have seen plants where assembly work is continued on units known to be defective, with a repair area to fix them at the end. I have heard managers justify this practice with the mistaken assumption that it allowed them to ship faster and I have seen the improvements that result from stopping it, in line with what Onetto describes.
But we shouldn’t forget that Jidoka is not about employee empowerment but about automation. Regardless of whether it’s translated as “automation with a human touch” or “autonomation,” it’s still a form of automation. Onetto recounts being made to watch Sakichi Toyoda’s Type G loom stopping when threads broke but that’s not all it did. It also had automatic shuttle change, which solved the problem of what to do when shuttles run out of yarn that had bedeviled loom engineers for decades.
See Jidoka isn’t just about “stop and fix”, Jidoka versus automation, or check out Working with Machines
See on <Scoop it link>
“Six Sigma as a problem-solving methodology causes many hang-ups for Japanese managers. Many Americans seeking training in Six Sigma in Japanese organizations face resistance with little explanation as to why. This often leads to frustration and contempt towards management. They write off the Japanese resistance to the training as resistance to change, preventing growth and feeling unrepresented.
“…As a lean thinker, I can start by asking myself, 
Nov 12 2017
How Hard Is It To Create Flow?
Mark DeLuzio started a discussion on LinkedIn with the following question:
It started a spirited debate, with the following participants, in alphabetical order: Bruce Andersen, Rob Beesley , Vincent Bozzone, Mark DeLuzio, Michael Dunne, Okan Gurbuz, Shahrukh Irani, Kerry McPherson,, Gregoire Nleme, Okan Gurbuz, Egidijus Karitonis, Sunil Malagi, Paul Van Metre, Jerry O’Dwyer, John Peck, Luis Saenz, Ravi Vaidiswaran, Prasad Velaga, Raka Rao, Sandur Subramanyam, Mark Warren
Sourced through LinkedIn
The following is a digest of my own answers, collated before they vanish in the replies-of-replies bowels of LinkedIn.
Continue reading…
Share this:
Like this:
By Michel Baudin • Blog clippings • 0 • Tags: Assembly Lines, Fabrication, Flow, Job-shop, Machine Shops, Runners-Repeaters-Strangers