Jidoka is a pillar of the Toyota Production System that aims to prevent defects through "intelligent automation" that partners human intervention with automation. It operates in the partial automation stage by detecting issues, stopping processes, addressing problems, and investigating root causes to help further automation. Closing the feedback loop by analyzing alternative process paths revealed through Jidoka is critical to long-term process improvement and moving toward true automation over time, even if 100% automation can never perfectly be achieved. The andon cord similarly helps Jidoka by pausing processes when errors occur to seek root causes.

1. Jidoka: A Partnership Between Automation
and Human Intervention
NYBPP Meetup (5/3/2017)
Highlights and Q&A

2. Agenda
I. Jidoka: A Partnership between Automation and Human Intervention
■ Automating Processes
■ The Continuum of Automation
■ Jidoka - “Intelligent Automation”
■ Closing the Feedback Loop
■ Jidoka must precede “True Automation”
■ Summary
II. Q&A
■ Can complex decisions be automated?
■ What is the andon cord and how does it partner with Jidoka?
■ Can a state of “true automation” ever be reached?

3. Jidoka: A Partnership between
Automation and Human Intervention
Understanding intelligent automation, the balance between human and
non-human roles in process management

4. Automating Processes
Business process has to be analyzed and built for automation. It is at
the decision points of a process where automation can be applied.
Automation is the creation of processes that can operate with little or no
human intervention. It means structuring process logic in a way that make
data inputs and outputs mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive
(MECE), such that no judgement is required to action a given situation.

5. The Continuum of Automation
Unless a process can be completely performed without any human
oversight or intervention, it is only partially automated, and must
balance automated and non-automated process paths.
Jidoka operates within this area of partial automation, and helps to
move process automation forward on the continuum.

6. Jidoka - “Intelligent Automation”
Jidoka is a pillar of the Toyota Production System and was
first developed within the loom industry in the late 1800’s.
In a process where partial automation is present, there will be times
where the process encounters problems that have to be attended
by a human. At these moments, the intelligent system will stop the
process and wait for assistance. This is where Jidoka comes in.

7. Jidoka - “Intelligent Automation”
Jidoka follows four principles:
1. Detect the abnormality
2. Stop the process
3. Fix or correct the immediate condition
4. Investigate the root cause and install a
countermeasure
This “automation with a human touch” aims to
● prevent the production of defective products,
● eliminate overproduction and
● focus attention on understanding the problems and
ensuring that they do not happen again.

8. Closing the Feedback Loop
Jidoka systems allow for feedback to be collected
systematically when the process goes wrong.
This means that, when the process stops and requires human
intervention, it is also providing data points regarding alternate
process pathways that may not have been well understood,
which is why they couldn’t be automated originally.
It is critical that these data points be acted on, and all the
alternate process paths be captured and visualized.
Root causes must be analyzed and either removed, or else
pathways to automate their handling must be established.

9. Closing the Feedback Loop
The act of collecting and acting on this data is called “closing
the feedback loop”.
Without this step, Jidoka will not be effective in helping with
long term process improvement.

10. Jidoka must precede “True Automation”
● In the absence of true automation (which means 100%
process automation, no human intervention EVER
required), Jidoka systems must be set up to ensure
process continuity, as well as discover how to further
automate the process.
● Without Jidoka, partially automated systems may result
in more cost than savings, in terms of defects and
process delays.
● When used correctly, Jidoka systems can vastly reduce
cost, and allow much less human labor to supervise a
large amount of productive, automated machines and
processes.

11. Summary
There will always be transition stages (between
manual and truly automated processes) where Jidoka
will be required.
• Jidoka produces feedback which must be analyzed
and acted on in order to further automate a given
process.
• Jidoka creates leverage for human resources: many
automated process components can be monitored by
very few experienced humans, resulting in great cost
effectiveness in the operating model.
• If understood and applied correctly, systems that
follow Jidoka principles can reveal the path towards
true automation.
.

12. Q&A
Answering questions from the Meetup

13. Can complex decisions be automated?
Yes!
● Nothing is too complex to be automated.
● Decisions simply have to be identified and broken down into
MECE criteria in order to automate complex processes.

14. What is the andon cord and how does it partner with
Jidoka?
Andon cord is how Toyota pauses
processes to seek root causes.
● Jidoka relies on root causes analysis in order to intelligently
automate.
● Without some function like andon cord, to stop processes
when errors occur, Jidoka can not properly learn and supply
information for further automation.

15. Can a state of “true automation” ever be reached?
No… but practically, yes
● True automation can never be achieved as processes are
constantly changing.
● That being said, simple processes can be automated to the
point where errors are so low, that they are practically at a
state of “true automation”.

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the group discussion board.
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