1. Rick Ross
10 October, 2016
Post-Kaizen: Process Streamlining Implementation Success Tool “Poka-Yoke”
Kaizen events will generate a great deal of asset velocity and business success for your business unit or
organization. Lean tools such as "Poka-Yoke" are key in change management, adoption and steady state
compliance.
Poka-yoke is simply a term to describe a system designed by Dr. Shigeo Shingo to prevent inadvertent
errors made by workers performing a process. The idea is to take over repetitive tasks that rely on
memory or vigilance and guard against any lapses in focus for a predictable and repeatable outcome.
Poka-Yoke ensures that no matter the number of variances and one-off considerations that can exist today
in a given core process,post-Kaizen change management implementation of Poka-Yoke mechanisms can
ensure specific actions are always executed in that process going forward. This tool can be used to ensure
that a managed chaos environment begins to follow predictable process execution patterns until a
streamlined process (post-Kaizen) is fully implemented as agreed to and as intended. Stated differently,
use of the Poka-Yoke instrument from the Lean tool bag can ensure compliance and adoption of business
improvements, enabling post-Kaizen business benefit realization.
An example I like to give Lean participants during a Lean Kaizen event preparation is based on a true
story regarding automobile manufacturers and the need to change the behavior of some motorists. In the
1940s and 1950s, customer surveys and crime statistics revealed that it was possible and very common to
pull a vehicle of that era into a parking space and turn off the key then exit the vehicle without placing it
in park. As a result, vehicles were known to roll out of their respective parking places, out into parking
lots and streets as a result of not being placed into park. Or,people would remember to put the vehicle
into park but forget to take the key out of the ignition, which meant automobile theft was also very high
during that period.
Automobile manufacturers solved these issues by ensuring certain actions had to be performed each and
every time the process was executed. The solution was the mechanical re-design requiring the motorist to
come to a stop, place the car in park in order to then pull the key out of the ignition. If the key was not
removed, a buzzer would sound alerting the motorist to finish the process. This is an example of Poka-
Yoke before the term was later coined by Dr. Shingo.
Mitel Kaizen event facilitators should take the time to understand how Poka-Yoke can be leveraged in
respective future state,value stream mapping (post-Kaizen) to ensure earliest change compliance and
benefit realization and success,plus community of interest buy-in to the business values of Lean Kaizen.