In a lean manufacturing process, a poka-yoke method is employed to eliminate product defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors in real time. Industrial engineer Shigeo Shingo first applied the term poka-yoke (“mistake-proofing” in Japanese) to the Toyota Production System. The biggest difference between now and then, in this regard, is that there are fewer human errors for humans to make.
Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things have given rise to IoT-enabled, mistake-proofing sensors that connect to other shop floor devices and systems. On top of that, AI software is increasingly being used to analyze the data that these sensors collect, finding patterns and adjusting processes without the need for human intervention.