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Detection and Mitigation are to minimize the effects of mistakes once they occur. Mitigation (“don’t let the situation get too bad”) is to seek to minimize the effects of errors.Įlimination, Prevention, Replacement and Facilitation are to avoid the occurrence of mistakes.Detection (“notice what is going wrong and stop it”) is to identify an error before further processing occurs so that the user can quickly correct the problem.Facilitation (“make tasks easier to perform”) is to employ techniques and to combine steps to make work easier to perform.Replacement (“use something better”) is to substitute a more reliable process to improve consistency.Prevention (“make sure it can never be done wrong”) is to design and engineer the product or process so that it is impossible to make a mistake at all.Elimination (“don’t do it anymore”) is to eliminate the possibility of error by redesigning the product or process so that the task or part is no longer necessary.Listed in order of preference in fundamentally addressing mistakes: Mistake-proofing/Poka Yoke is based on 6 principles. Poka Yoke focuses on reducing or eliminating human errors, which cause defects.īenefits of Poka-Yoke Principles of Mistake-proofing/Poka-Yoke Human error should be nipped in the bud before they become bigger issues. So let’s see the relationship of defects and human errors. And some products are manufactured for safety critical applications in motor vehicles, aerospace and oil exploration etc.Ī failure in these areas can have very serious consequences and potentially cause loss of life. Some customers will return a whole batch of parts if they find just one of them to be defective.
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Manufacturing defective products can be very costly. They are also equipped with sensors and alarms to prevent operation when overloaded.
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Another example of Poka-Yoke device – many elevators are equipped with an electric eye to prevent doors from shutting on people. For some cabinets, opening one drawer now locks all the rest, reducing the chance of the cabinet tipping.
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To give an example of Poka Yoke design – filing cabinets could fall over if too many drawers were pulled out at the same time. Poka-Yoke’s are mechanisms used to eliminate errors by effectively making it impossible to make mistakes in a given process. The idea was originally developed in the 1960s by Shigeo Shingo who was one of the IE engineers at Toyota. Poka-Yoke, also known as mistake-proofing, is a technique for avoiding simple human errors at work. Humans make mistakes, and these mistakes can cause defective products.
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