Not My Job

Let us consider jidoka through an illustrative dialogue:

“Why did you stop the line when downtime costs so much?”
“Because if we do not contain the problem where we discover it, many people further downstream may have to correct the same defect.”

In the illustration, the road marking goes around a tree. The person painting the line has somehow completed the task. But has the problem in the road design or work planning been solved? We cannot assume that cutting down the tree is necessarily the answer; first we must understand why the obstacle is there and what the safe options are.

People who see problems but take no steps towards a solution.

People who say, “I told you so; it was obvious this would happen,” yet contribute nothing to the process.

People who accept the existing defect and merely talk about it, rather than helping to understand its cause.

People who say, “Is that my job? Why should I do it?”

Lean philosophy takes a different approach to behaviour.

Problems should be solved at their source—the spirit of jidoka and kaizen.

The aim is to solve the problem through a process with clearly defined authority and responsibilities. Employees do not have to intervene in every problem on their own. They should report the abnormality, apply the defined stopping rule when necessary and contribute to the authorised team’s solution.

Rather than dressing up defects and accepting them, we make defects visible and then eliminate them.