This concept is very useful, not only in manufacturing but also at home. As somebody else has explained, MegSafe used this principle. Another great example is our dryer at home: the filter that needs to be cleaned every month or so has to be plugged back in in a certain way. They perforated they filter such that there’s absolutely no way to plug in back in the wrong way. Another great application would be gas vs diesel knobs at gas stations. I’m not sure whether new cars/pump provide that already
Poka-yoke
11–20 of 62 posts
Re: Poka-yoke
#12I 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.
This only works if you have a thermostatic mixer or consistent temperature of your hot water.
The gold standard is a pressure-balanced thermostatic mixer, which always outputs the same temperature at the same setting. Most of them come with two knobs, "temperature" and "flow". I miss the one I had a while ago.
Re: Poka-yoke
#13In a similar vein, and also from Japan - 'pointing and calling', used on the railways.
Re: Poka-yoke
#14I 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.
Yep, that's a good tip.
Read this, if you haven't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
It's a book about how minor design differences can basically change your life. It will make your life miserable, because you will start noticing all the stupidly bad design decision and blame the designer in most cases.
Re: Poka-yoke
#15This 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…
>They called it the obvious word in their own language, it's only a cool buzzword to non-native speakers reading English Wikipedia.
Same place "Kanban" came from
Re: Poka-yoke
#16This 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…
"Common sense" isn't common. Not only that, it's ridiculously unpopular to try to change people's ideas of what common sense is. You can see this even on HN when people suggest that programming language tooling should constrain defects.
It's interesting how much of "Japanese" manufacturing practice is really the work of W Edwards Deming, the prophet without honor in his home country.
Re: Poka-yoke
#17This is a very useful concept even beyond physical design. When I evaluate UIs the top 5 things I look into are:
Visual rhyme, Accessibility, Affordances, Mistake-proofing (“Poka-yoke”), and Defensive design.
https://medium.com/@dio/5-things-to-consider-when-evaluating...
Re: Poka-yoke
#18This 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…
It's hard not to be dismissive of what appears to be a simple set of concepts, but you're missing on an opportunity to learn a very cool set of skills here. I recommend that anyone who wants to live a better life and do better work read books on the Toyota Production System and Taiichi Ohno. As for Poka-Yoke, It's a word that seems simple but when used in industry contexts communicates a deeper set of requirements than just "make it foolproof". Also, don't undersell how useful systematizing common sense is (and how difficult its application can get).
Re: Poka-yoke
#19I 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.
This only works if you have a thermostatic mixer or consistent temperature of your hot water. The gold standard is a pressure-balanced thermostatic mixer, which always outputs the same temperature at the same setting. Most of them come with two knobs, "temperature" and "flow". I miss the one I had a while ago.
I don't have a fancy mixer, but if your hot water heater is reasonably consistent and you have a working main pressure regulating valve, you should have enough consistency for this to work.
Re: Poka-yoke
#20This 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…
I'm not thinking about actual manufacturers when I think about misapplying cool-sounding Japanese manufacturing concepts. I'm more thinking about other businesses where they basically cargo-cult manufacturing ideas without actually thinking about whether they work (which is ironic because continually thinking about whether your processes work is the key part of the process.)
I'm mostly struck at how error-proofing is a seemingly obvious idea, and yet it's still worth writing and talking about. That makes me think most of the value is in the execution and not in anything that can be written down.