Poka-yoke
en.wikipedia.org
Poka-yoke
1–10 of 62 posts
Re: Poka-yoke
#2I think this aligns with the notion of an Exocortex, extending our brain and our IQ by making it easier to do the correct thing.
Re: Poka-yoke
#3One of my favorite examples of poka-yoke is the Apple MagSafe charger. The magnetic part itself is foolproof, sure. But the genius part is the small metal knob that meshes with the removable AC prong piece. It is impossible to insert that piece in any other way than it was intended, and the solution is unobtrusive, clean, and simple.
Re: Poka-yoke
#4This seems like an interesting and useful process design concept on one hand, and on the other hand, it also sounds like a Japanese buzzword for foolproofing (in fact, the article notes that the term was originally “baka-yoke”, which is literally “foolproof” or “idiot-proof”). On the one hand, I don’t think Toyota invented the concept of foolproofing; on the other hand, giving it a cool buzzword gives you an excuse to talk about it, which means you’re more likely to actually do it when appropriate.
I’m also kind of amused at how the entire business world basically said, “man, this company made super reliable cars in the 80’s and 90’s[1], let’s learn their secrets” and it turns out that once you strip away the exotic Japanese veneer, it’s mostly just systemized common sense. Which is not a minor thing to do, to be fair, except it’s easy for businesses to take good, well-systemized ideas and utterly misapply them.
[1] As far as I know, they still make reliable cars. But you can still drive a 92 Camry today if you wanted to with little fuss. By definition, we’re 26 years away from seeing if today’s Camry is quite that reliable.
Re: Poka-yoke
#5One of my favorite examples of poka-yoke is the Apple MagSafe charger. The magnetic part itself is foolproof, sure. But the genius part is the small metal knob that meshes with the removable AC prong piece. It is impossible to insert that piece in any other way than it was intended, and the solution is unobtrusive, clean, and simple.
I still don’t get why they removed it. MagSafe was a great thing. Sure some people got things stuck in the connector but that is a much smaller problem than having your laptop pulled along with the cable when someone trips on your charger.
Re: Poka-yoke
#6This seems like an interesting and useful process design concept on one hand, and on the other hand, it also sounds like a Japanese buzzword for foolproofing (in fact, the article notes that the term was originally “baka-yoke”, which is literally “foolproof” or “idiot-proof”). On the one hand, I don’t think Toyota invented the concept of foolproofing; on the other hand, giving it a cool buzzword gives you an excuse t…
> giving it a cool buzzword
They called it the obvious word in their own language, it's only a cool buzzword to non-native speakers reading English Wikipedia.
> systemized common sense
Of course. And still businesses are full of systemic problems, where common sense fails. Just like well written programs are just "systemized instructions", but most programs are buggy and brittle. Clarity in defining and executing on simple concepts is worth a lot.
Re: Poka-yoke
#7This seems like an interesting and useful process design concept on one hand, and on the other hand, it also sounds like a Japanese buzzword for foolproofing (in fact, the article notes that the term was originally “baka-yoke”, which is literally “foolproof” or “idiot-proof”). On the one hand, I don’t think Toyota invented the concept of foolproofing; on the other hand, giving it a cool buzzword gives you an excuse t…
Industrial Engineer here,
This is not a buzz word, this is the name of the tool we use. 4/4 companies Ive been at used Poke-Yoke, Poka-Yoke, or Error Proofing interchangeably.
And while I dont own a Japanese car, I can verify the 'common sense' ideas had a resurgence as Toyota applied a process to these principles. It seems nearly every company MUST apply them or they are uncompetitive.
From a plant with 50 employees to a fortune 500 plant, I have not seen these 'misapplied'. Only excellence.
I find outsiders are pessimistic and are unaware that these plants are using SPC and have process engineers looking to optimize daily.
Re: Poka-yoke
#8I wrote about putting a line on your shower handle to denote 'good temp'. (used a shower crayon, or anything)
Now I put my handle in the correct location and its warm everyday.
Re: Poka-yoke
#9I guess that aligns with type systems in programming languages. The type systems make sure that the plain simple mistake of passing an integer in the place of a string is prevented. Of course more powerful type systems like Haskell fool proof it more if the developer is putting the effort of writing more types to restrict things more.
I think that's a clear implementation of poka-yoke on the programming languages level allowing developers to fool proof their APIs
Re: Poka-yoke
#10One of my favorite examples of poka-yoke is the Apple MagSafe charger. The magnetic part itself is foolproof, sure. But the genius part is the small metal knob that meshes with the removable AC prong piece. It is impossible to insert that piece in any other way than it was intended, and the solution is unobtrusive, clean, and simple.
The metal knob actually is PE pin for the AC plug, which is used in some parts of the world with presumably stricter low voltage safety standards which would not allow for the chassis of macbook to float at what is essentially half of the mains voltage (this is why you get slight tingling sensation if you run back of your hand over macbook that is plugged into charger with two-prong plug).