Jidoka

Jidoka, a philosophy that makes automatic machines capable of detecting abnormalities by themselves so that they stop working on their own. This is an augmentation of their capabilities as they are not only repetitive-task-runners, e.i. automatic; but also independent-action-takers, autonomous (something we take for granted now a days).

Two key benefits of jidoka are: first, detaching people from machines so they no longer need to constantly watch over them, which is a misuse of human potential as they could be doing something else (the ratio of machines-per-worker went from 1:1 to 25:1); second, preventing machines from delivering defects down the production line, hence eliminating waste (of time, raw materials, energy, etc) and the actual loss of quality from the product.

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It all started within the 1905-1924 with the loom machines invented by Sakichi Toyoda and the improvements he developed among his son Kiichiro.

Mr. Sakichi literally represented the idea of adding a human labor into the machine itself by modifying (the standard ji-do-ka) 自動化: self-motion-ization, automation; to be (the Toyoda’s ji-do-ka) 自働化: self-labor-ization, autonomation (autonomous + automation).

In 1936 jidoka was grown and implemented systematically at a large scale by Taiichi Ohno, with the backing of Eiji Toyoda (a Kiichiro’s cousin), who worked on an advanced, complex manufacturing approach, the Toyota Production System (TPS), a work that took up to the 1970 to finish. Shingeo Shingo called autonomation “pre-automation” because the invention of Mr. Sakichi was not autonomous enough.

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Reference:

• Autonomation (wikipedia.org).
• Item 4. The Birth of Jidoka (toyota-global.com).
• Jidoka (toyotauk.com).
• ニンベンの付いた自働化とは？ (kaizen-base.com).
• Shingeo Shingeo: A Study of the Toyoda Production System from an Industrial Engineering Point of View (page xxiii).