Talk:Jidoka

Jidoka was initially associated with the term Autonomation rather than the actual meaning of Automation. Taiichi Ohno meant to associate it with the Autonomic Nervous System from the standpoint that he wanted the production floor to operate just as the human body works for an individual.

Mr. Ohno is referred to say that the autonomic nervous system is capable to respond even when a person is asleep and for this reason Jidoka was incorporated to the Toyota Production System to make the people react to problems in an autonomous way meaning that the operators do not have to rely on the upper management levels to make decisions such as stopping the line when a defect is detected.

This is in essence the main influence from Mr Sakichi Toyoda when he invented the automatic looms which were given the ability to run by themselves but at the same time were enabled to tell the operators when a thread was broken for them to fix minor stoppages without management intervention.

We can always associate automation with autonomation but the idea behind Jidoka is for the process and the operators to be able to detect problems in an autonomous way and fix them immediately otherwise communicate them via conventional channels or through Andon mechanisms.

(Note Added by Xavier Lozano, 02 August 2006, Brownsville, Texas)

That is very interesting. Can you quote a source for this view ? Facius 17:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Response to Facius
Facius:

The best I can do is to recommend reading Chapter 3 of Taiichi Ohno's book on 'Toyota Production System' published by Productivity Press (link below). The idea is very clear in the best manufacturing book ever written 30 years ago.

http://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Production-System-Beyond-Large-Scale/dp/0915299143/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-2038353-4584463?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180553668&sr=8-1

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