Assembly Planbook - April 2008 - (Page 32) Quality in Assembly and operators to detect when an abnormal condition occurs and immediately stop work. It highlights the causes of problems when they first occur. This leads to improvements in built-in quality by eliminating the root causes of defects. “Jidoka is the mysterious Japanese word that has a couple of meanings,” says Smalley. “One is the notion of building in quality at the process. This is done in hundreds of small ways that involve subtle and simple uses of inprocess technology. This is the least well understood part of TPS and the hardest to see. “It is simple for an academic or a visitor to walk through a Toyota plant and see a standardized work chart or a kanban,” notes Smalley. “They are simple and visible. Jidoka, on the other hand, is inside the machine ‘under the hood.’ It is tough to show people and it varies machine by machine. “As my former boss in engineering used to say, ‘there are just some things we are not going to show people,’” adds Smalley. “This is part of Toyota’s Toyota has been trying to balance an aggressive expansion plan with quality control issues. Photo courtesy Toyota Motor Corp. his automatic looms for about 20 years and was awarded many patents. Jidoka requires manufacturing systems to be designed so that they can only make good products. Production of defective products must be impossible. The goal of jidoka is to detect problems immediately and facilitate visual control. Specifically, jidoka enables machines Quality Endures. We shipped the first Alpha Series Cam Indexer on September 29, 1997. ZERO replacement cam followers have yet been shipped. FR BH Series Base Machine EE 2-Y WARRANEAR T Y! NEW! Alpha Series Table Indexer GY Series Pick & Place ED Series Shaft Output ServoDex Roller Gear Technology Largest cam follower sizes in the industry with unmatched accuracy. 10655 State Route 47 • PO Box 4338 • Sidney, Ohio 45365 Phone: (937) 498-4901 • sales@sankyoamerica.com www.sankyoamerica.com 32 ASSEMBLY / April 2008 www.assemblymag.com http://www.sankyoamerica.com http://www.sankyoamerica.com http://www.assemblymag.com
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