Poka-Yoke

Book excerpt: If your goal is 100% zero defects, here is the book for you — a completely illustrated guide to poka-yoke (mistake-proofing) for supervisors and shop-floor workers. Many poka-yoke ideas come from line workers and are implemented with the help of engineering staff or tooling or machine specialists. The result is better product quality and greater participation by workers in efforts to improve your processes, your products, and your company as a whole. The first section of the book uses a simple, illustrated format to summarize many of the concepts and main features of poka-yoke. The second section shows 240 examples of poka-yoke improvements implemented in Japanese plants. The book: Organizes examples according to the broad issue or problem they address. Pinpoints how poka-yoke applies to specific devices, parts and products, categories of improvement methods, and processes. Provides sample improvement forms for you to sketch out your own ideas. Use Poka-yoke in study groups as a model for your improvement efforts. It may be your single most important step toward eliminating defects completely. (For an industrial engineering perspective on how source inspection and poka-yoke can work together to reduce defects to zero, see Shigeo Shingo's Zero Quality Control.)