Jidoka is one of the core principles of the Toyota Production System, one that empowers production-line workers to take immediate action the moment a defect is detected. The worker who discovers the defect pulls a red cord, and the entire assembly line stops. Co-workers and the supervisor rush over to that worker, forming an ad hoc problem-solving team. The team, led by the worker who pulled the cord, quickly works to resolve the problem to prevent any defects from reaching the next operation.

Using jidoka and other tools, Toyota became the quality leader in the automotive industry, admired and respected by customers, competitors, and the media. Unfortunately, Toyota’s reputation for quality has become tarnished due to the well-publicized, sudden, and unintended acceleration problem, and the associated recall since October 2009 of more than 10 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles.

Imagine an automobile owner who goes to the service desk at the dealership and reports a problem, describing the symptoms in detail to the customer service representative. If the service desk employee sees the same or similar symptoms in the dealer’s or manufacturer’s database, she knows what to tell the customer and what to do to get the problem solved. But if the symptoms were not in the database, she would take responsibility for the customer’s problem. The representative would be the key point person for this set of symptoms, and would be able to call on other technical, safety, and quality resources within the company to verify and solve the customer’s problem. She would not immediately defend the company but would be on the customer’s side and enter the symptoms and raise a red flag in the database. This process becomes the zenjidoka equivalent of pulling the red cord, when a service worker relies on a combination of procedure and self-reliance to find the best approach to solve the customer’s problem.