Poka Yoke pattern making

Posted by Kathleen Fasanella on Oct 31, 2005

By now, all of my readers know I’m enamored of lean manufacturing and I try to apply it specifically to sewn products manufacturing. One of the things I wrote about extensively in The Entrepreneur’s Guide… was error-proofing your patterns; the lean concept to describe this is called Poka Yoke (pronounced “poh-kah yoh-kay”). An excellent introduction to Poka Yoke can be found here. By the way, check out this site’s management topics sidebar for very nicely written and presented information. Poka yoke comes from two Japanese words – “yokeru” which means “to avoid”, and “poka” which means “inadvertent errors.” So, poka yoke translates to “avoiding inadvertent errors”. Poka Yoke is kind of fun to look for too, you already know lots of examples of it. For example, your coffee grinder. If the cap is not aligned properly, it won’t grind. Similarly, you can’t spill coffee while it’s being ground, saving you the potentiality of a lot of mess. As the mother of a smoothie-making child, I can only hope we’ll soon have a blender that works the same way. Another example of Poka Yoke is a ground plug; you can only get those in one way. Poka Yoke is a great concept because people rarely make errors when they’re focused and “on top of it”; people make mistakes when they’re distracted, tired, irritable, hungry or whatever. Anyway, today’s topic is Poka Yoke pattern making.

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