ABSTRACT
Just-in-time (JIT), Toyota Production System, Lean manufacturing, Kanban, and pull system are common buzzwords that are heard on many shop floors or in war rooms throughout the manufacturing industry. One term that goes along with Japanese manufacturing practices is Jidoka. The Toyota Production System is often modeled as having two pillars, with one of the pillars being JIT and the other Jidoka. Jidoka has two meanings in Japanese. One of the meanings is “automation”—changing a manual process into a machine process. The other meaning is “automatic control of defects” (Monden, 1983, p. 141).
