I have come to the conclusion that there are two types of people in this world: ones that open a box and read the instructions carefully before assembly and the others that assemble first without looking at the instructions unless a major problem occurs. Even though I am a pretty good engineer, I always read the instructions first. My wife happens to fall in with the other crowd.
During the upcoming holiday season, many parents will be
purchasing gifts that have in small print "some assembly required" on the box.
Without exception, many of us will be burning the midnight oil in a frantic
attempt to complete the task of assembly before Christmas morning. In those
late-night sessions, assembly problems can quickly add frustration regardless if
you read instructions first or not, although I really believe that reading the
instructions first significantly lowers the chance of an assembly
error.
Do you read instructions carefully before assembly? Good
manufacturers will recognize that there exists in our world this great divide
between the instruction readers and the intuitive assemblers. Great
manufacturers will put a system in place to prevent operator errors for both
groups.
So, what is a manufacturer to do in order to prevent operator
errors? An excellent lean tool quickly comes to mind called poka-yoke. Poka-yoke
is a system or device that prevents errors before they become problems. It is
also known as error-proofing or mistake-proofing.
I came across an
excellent example of a simple poka-yoke recently when I purchased a wireless
card for my laptop computer. Yes, I am just now moving to wireless. Following
the Toyota way of only going to proven technology, I have resisted earlier
temptations to go wireless.
I purchased a wireless card from Linksys, a
division of Cisco Systems. In bold letters, the first instruction on the
instruction sheet clearly points out to run the CD first before connecting the
device to your PC. The poka-yoke system Cisco Systems used to prevent an
operator error in this step is a simple label. Knowing that some people never
read the instructions first, they placed this label with the same warning to run
the CD first on both the CD and the wireless card. As a result, no matter what I
picked up first, I see this important instruction. I bet this simple poka-yoke
has dramatically reduced, if not eliminated, the error of not running the CD
first. Outstanding job, Cisco!
Look at your processes and products. How
can operator errors occur? Think how a simple poka-yoke can eliminate the error
and make it mistake-proof like Cisco Systems.
