Navigating through the field of errors.

In the nineties I remember when I was travelling, navigation didn’t existed. We used a book with maps. It was not always easy when several directions where presented to know which road you actually had to take because a major city was sometimes announced and then some smaller ones. A decision had to be taken quickly, unless you knew the map by head. 

In a production environment a navigation system could be called a poka yoke. A poka yoke is any mechanism in a process that helps an operator avoid (yokeru) mistakes (poka) without wasting time. But as with the paper version of navigation and trying to know things by head, in production it happens that we choose the wrong way ending in the wrong destination: an error. An error is something like all possible states (or failure modes) of a system that can be reached by action.

A good poka yoke like your car’s navigation system will guide you towards good products. What would happen if your navigation system stopped? Would you still be able to find your destination? If a system takes over all knowledge you also will be lost! Good that I didn’t throw away all my paper maps :) ! So a navigation system should at the one hand guide you towards the destination but also try to help you remember how to get there in a gamified way.

To navigate through the process Arkite has come up with a projected navigation system for each step of the process, minimizing the bad possible states but mindful for stimulating the alertness, competence and creativity!

Making operators more master chefs than industrialized robots. Don’ automate, autonomate. People matter!