http://josephmcohen.com/post/71536977591/toyota-manufacturing-principles Toyota Manufacturing Principles HEART 2 NOTES Throughout its history, Toyota has made a habit of labeling its business concepts and guiding values. In learning more about the company, I’ve picked up a few useful concepts from their manufacturing vocabulary: Jidoka: Automation with a Human Touch The idea of jidoka is that humans should work with machines to produce the best possible outcome, leveraging the execution ability of a machine and the judgement of a human. I learned this term on a tour of Toyota’s Nagoya factory, where jidoka is a guiding principle. The concept originally comes from Sakichi Toyoda’s invention of the automatic loop in 1896, back when Toyota was in the textile business. Jidoka will become increasingly relevant as computers continue to do more and more work that humans have historically done. The concept has been ported to English under the name ...