Category: Poka Yoke

In 2008, Starbucks was taking a major hit from the financial crisis, losing customers to competitors, and having to close hundreds of stores. Despite having its back against the wall, some decisions made around key Six Sigma principles helped Starbucks bounce back better than ever. How Giving Quality and a Better Experience To Employees and […]

Many organizations attempt to improve their processes. The first instinct for many new quality personnel is to attempt 100 percent inspection. A more experienced approach to quality control is to control your inputs to eliminate defects. Consider the following scenario for an organization that had a limited capital budget but needed to ensure its product […]

The following question has been posed on many Internet discussion forums: Has anyone poka-yoked a computer-aided design (CAD) system? The goal of poka-yoke, or mistake-proofing, is to design a process or mechanism that prevents an error from occurring. In the world of machine and industrial design, CAD systems are one of the best forms of […]

Self-help books abound for those who are looking to improve themselves, either personally or professionally. What these books fail to address, however, is the personalization that most people need to make lasting change. Ron McMillan is one of the authors of the book Change Anything, which introduces a framework to help you achieve any of […]

1. Use cross-functional teams (CFT) approach to mistake proofing. 2. Selection of process for mistake proofing. During the third phase of advanced product quality planning (APQP), the CFT shall identify the processes, where, due to avoidable human errors, the rating of “occurrence” and/or “detection” have increased thereby increasing the risk priority number (RPN) for the process. Poka-yoke techniques […]

It was a Japanese manufacturing engineer named Shigeo Shingo who developed the concept that revolutionized the quality profession in Japan. Originally called “fool proofing” and later changed to “mistake proofing” and “fail safing” so employees weren’t offended, poka yoke (pronounced “poh-kah yoh-kay”) translates into English as to avoid (yokeru) inadvertent errors (poka). The result is […]