Manufacturing Leadership

Giving machines and operators the power to notice when something is wrong and quickly pause their work. This helps companies to increase quality at every step of the process and to have workers and machines work separately for better efficiency. Jidoka is a fundamental concept in the Toyota Production System, which is an important way of doing things in Toyota factories. It is one of the two main principles, along with just-in-time. Jidoka is a system that helps identify problems quickly because if a problem happens, work immediately stops. This helps make things better and prevents ...

The most important thing in standardized work is finding a balance between giving employees strict rules to follow and allowing them to be creative and come up with new ideas to consistently meet difficult goals like cost, quality, and delivery. The secret to finding the right balance depends on how standards are written and who helps create them.

Starting in the early 1900s, efficiency pioneer Henry Ford began working on a system for continuously improving the processes in his factories. The spiritual successor of this goal is known today as Six Sigma, and it can provide you and your company with a better way to measure quality than you have ever used before.