J... Jidoka

Jidoka. This word in particular gives rise to a fair amount of recriminations from all those who think that we are a sect and that we speak Japanese just so as not to be understood by others.? However, if a concept deserves a specific word, given the profound meaning of the word, it is Jidoka.

Each time I travel, I discover a new subtlety behind this word.

Jidoka is the left-hand pillar of TPS. It is sometimes translated as Autonomation, stop to first defect, intelligent automation. That's not wrong. But that's not all.

My first misconception was to associate first of all Jidoka with Andon. Andon is the signal that any operator can activate to signal a defect, a deviation from the standard or a doubt. The team leader then intervenes to analyse the situation, unblock it they can, or decide to call another person. Andon is therefore the human implementation of the stop to first defect. The secret of Andon is to transform a managerial chain of control into a chain of help, and it's an incredibly powerful practice for training employees in what a defect is, establishing a culture of quality.

But Jidoka didn't start with the Andon. It began with the machine. To be more precise, it began with the question of "how to make life easier for those who use machines". The famous system invented in 1896 by Sakichi Toyoda, which automatically detected the breakage of a warp thread on the loom and was capable of stopping the machine and warning the operator, was primarily intended to make life easier for the workers. Rather than monitoring the machine without doing anything, (uninteresting job), they were able to guarantee quality on several machines at the same time. It is through this quality that productivity is improved, and it is because work is made easier that quality is increased.

Easier work => better quality => increased productivity

As soon as the work is ambiguous, tedious or imprecise, it becomes difficult, quality is at risk, and, with quality, productivity.

My second misconception concerned automation. As an engineer myself, I thought that producing more and faster was a source of productivity. But when this productivity is achieved at the expense of flexibility (the ability to adapt to changing customer demands) or agility (the ability to respond quickly and effectively to an unforeseen situation), all you do is to accelerate the production of defects. We need human people to provide the necessary reflection for these two needs, flexibility and agility. Intelligent automation consists of separating the work of the human from that of the machine. People are not machines! The machine serves the human being, not the other way round. It's up to the machine to carry out as many repetitive and arduous tasks as possible, and it's also up to the machine to be capable of detecting its own defaults. That's why starting to look at a factory by looking at the machines is not a lack of respect for people. It's about looking at the extent to which machines are making people's lives easier - or not. You can do the same exercise outside factories. Is this information system designed to make life easier to the people who use it? Think about the last time you thought that the person who programmed this stuff never used it...

This reflection enables us to look at major digitalisation initiatives with different eyes. What problem are we trying to solve by digitising? Is it the one of people working on the ground? Or that of the technocrats who want to fit in their "solutions"?

Jidoka helps us to question the place of human beings in the company. Where is there a need to see, feel and detect problems? Where do we need to solve problems creatively? Where do we need to make decisions? Separating human work from that of the machine means affirming that humans are not machines, and that's just as well!

Cécile Roche

(Tnaks to Julie Chevalier for the pictures)