Jidoka: The Toyota Principle of Building Quality into the Process

Jidoka is one of the main pillars of the TPS. The TPS is presented as a house with two pillars. One pillar represents just-in-time (JIT), and the other pillar the concept of Jidoka. Take away any of the pillars holding up the roof, and the entire system will collapse. Take out quality, and there is no TPS. Jidoka is a principle of building quality for customers-not inspecting quality. Building quality mean making it right the first time. If you are making defective products or using unacceptable quality standards and filtering these defects out through an inspection system, there is no building quality-and no Jidoka. You are just catching the mistakes made in the manufacturing process. This cost a lot of money and resources and puts the business at risk.