Friday, May 20, 2011

Mistake Proofing or Poka Yoke

Thrashing out mistakes in manufacturing engineering was industrialized by the Japanese as a tool of mistake proofing that helps sell out waste in areas such as time, vigor and resources. The idea stresses on producing zero defects as a part of a quality tool kit to preclude human errors. Although Poka Yoke is applied differently in dissimilar situations, the tasteless thread that binds them all is its simplicity; it uses small tools at the point of the foreseen, mistake generation itself.

Empowerment of Employees As A Tool of Poka Yoke Development

Data Collection Tools

The gorgeous part of mistake-proofing is the empowerment of employees to identify, advise ways out and execute the plan to iron out the cause of the mistake at its point of origination. In fact, any person from a employer to a line laborer can be allowed to unblemished mistake proofing planning. It applies to every other area, together with market transactions, in the same way.

How Can Activities Be Mistake-Proofed?

Mistake proofing is simply managed by nearnessy of mind. Sometimes it so happens that an laborer notices a mistake in the way things are done in his section or line. Generally, exposure to complicated aspects such as work article and doing procedures let the laborer think about ways of rectifying the mistake.

One who has noticed the mistake will come up with suggestions for eliminating the mistakes by rather simple methods. Empowered environments take care of enthusiasm in employees, which finally results in success.

Lets take dissimilar simple examples. Colgate Palmolive was losing its market share to a rival toothpaste producer and the population in their marketing group could hardly help reverse the trend, despite their best efforts. This was until an laborer in the packing group suggested a rather simplistic idea that finally has shown results. The laborer suggested enlarging of the tubes opening, which increased the amount of paste issued each time the consumers wanted to brush.

Where does mistake proofing frame into the equation in this instance? The mistake was not in the manufacturing, packing or quality of the product but in the way it was marketed. The marketing was centered around an emphasis on quality and not on the quantity the consumers should use, which was irrelevant in the absence of severe competition.

Mistake elimination need not have complex solutions that consume lot of time and resources. simple solutions can sometimes be arrived at by those who work on the shop floor. Let us look into an additional one example which significantly explains Poka Yoke. Take a small mistake in the assembling of pens, such as a forgotten spring for operating the writing tip by a button located on top of the pen. The assembly laborer would not have forgotten if he was given all of the components in sets rather than each part like springs, refills etc separately.

The Simplicity Of Poka Yoke

Quite evidently, Poka Yoke is pretty simple. It does not involve spending huge sums of money, time and complex procedures. It employs making the best use of empowered human minds. If it is used on a continuous basis with the goal of eliminating many smaller mistakes, the results can be wonderful.

Mistake Proofing or Poka Yoke

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