INTRODUCTION
Each error made can penalize us heavily (either in term of money, time, and reputation). Old convention taught us to react and plan the damage control to minimize the impact. Old convention too demanded that for each incident head must roll. But has it been that effective in stopping people from making mistakes? Better still, do people really meant to make those mistakes in the first place? Today’s quality management too requested us to move from being reactive to being proactive in managing our mistakes.
So what can we do to avoid error from happening? Luckily there is a technique used by Japanese to make it more difficult for human/employee to create an error while working. This Japanese technique is called Poka-Yoke. Surprisingly the technique relies upon common sense to achieve the result. It is very easy to learn even by operator level and it can be immediately implemented upon returning to your working environment, be it in manufacturing, hospital, banking or other service industries. It is definitely a powerful approach for eliminating mistakes and achieving zero defects by identifying opportunity to reduce the probability of each mistake from ever occurring again. Most importantly, it requires employee’s involvement and active participation in the error cause removal program. Come, learn and apply this mistake-proofing technique that will drive error, mistake, and defect out of your process.
- Improve employees attitude with defect reduction mindset
- More difficult to make mistake in organization
- Big gain with small investment