poke yoke
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poke yoke
a Japanese term meaning ‘to make fail-safe’. Any mechanism or process that prevents mistakes being made can be called a poke yoke. They are techniques and thinking designed to prevent errors in manufacture and service provision. The 3 pin plug is a simple poke yoke, it can only be inserted into the socket in one way, hence – fail-safe. Poke yokes have two broad functions, regulatory and setting. Regulatory devices are those that either control a process or give a warning about it. Control devices are used to shut a process down whenever it detects an abnormality. See PRODUCTION CONTROL.Collins Dictionary of Business, 3rd ed. © 2002, 2005 C Pass, B Lowes, A Pendleton, L Chadwick, D O’Reilly and M Afferson