Jidoka

The punchline of the Dip book is that it's not about quitting at all. It's about mastery. Hal has a great blog about production thinking. He taught me the phrase Jidoka, which describes part of how Toyota creates mastery and high quality. I'll quote something he sent me:

[Toyota calls] stop and fix the problem "jidoka". It's a process where people are asked to identify every instance where the situation doesn't match the expectation. They do that by "pulling the cord" to activate an "andon" -- a signal. There are three signals: green (all fine), yellow (come look at this), and red (I need help). Operators in the Georgetown, KY plant pull the cord up to 1000 times/day. But the line only fully stops about a handful of times each day.