Poka Yoke is a Japanese term that means mistake proofing or error prevention. It is a technique that aims to eliminate defects and errors in products, processes, or services by designing them in a way that makes mistakes impossible or easy to detect and correct.
The bottom line for any business is that the quality of the finished product or service is the single biggest determinant of success.
In today's competitive world any organization has to manufacture high quality, defect free products at optimum cost.
The culture of total quality management, total productive management in the manufacturing as well as service sector gave birth to new ways to improve quality of products.
By using various tools of TQM like KAIZEN, Six Sigma, JIT, JIDCO, POKAYOKE, FMS etc. organization is intended to develop quality culture.
During actual manufacturing of any product there are too many simple and monotonous steps which are carried out by operators.
These monotonous work operations result in to mental fatigue and lack of interest in work which ultimately causes silly mistakes of operators and we know that human is prone to errors even though he doesn't want it. To avoid these simple mistakes, poka yoke concept play important role.
By implementing some simple solutions we can avoid mistakes. The long term success of poka yoke gives output of saving time and we release the work pressure on mind of worker. We can use creativity and special skills of workers for more creative operations instead of increasing pressure for monotonous activities.
Poka-Yoke involves identifying steps in a process where mistakes are most likely to occur and making changes to prevent those mistakes from happening.
It’s an important tool in Lean, to identify waste, and in Six Sigma, to prevent mistakes that lead to defects. Poka-Yoke also involves giving workers the ability to stop a production system when a problem is seen, giving everyone an opportunity to address it so it does not happen again.
Putting Poka-Yoke to work involves following a series of steps:
- Create a process flow chart that includes details on every step in a process, no matter how small.
- Review each step to determine where human errors are most likely to occur.
- After identifying potential errors, work through the process to find the root cause of the error.
- Design solutions to reduce or eliminate the risk of the error occurring in the first place. These solutions can include eliminating the step or replacing it.
If teams cannot eliminate the step, they must develop ways to minimize impact of the error should it occur. This includes changing source inspection methods.
