Pattern

Stop the line

You might say: jidoka, andon

Detect an abnormal condition, stop propagation, show the signal, and call a person who can correct the cause. Work resumes after the abnormality is understood.

Ask
What signal stops the flow, who is called, and what evidence allows the line to resume?

Sources

  1. Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota Production System, The Two Pillars of TPSjidoka―which can be loosely translated as "automation with a human touch"―based on the concepts of stopping immediately when abnormalities are detected
  2. Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota Production System, Jidokawhen an abnormality occurs, such as a machine or equipment abnormality, quality abnormality, or a work delay, the machine or equipment can detect the abnormality and stop automatically
  3. Lauren Tan, pstack, Let loops start themselvesEvery stage can stop the line. Triage can decide the report is expected behavior, repro can fail to reproduce it, and the fixer can judge the change too risky.
  4. Taiichi Ohno, Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production, Chapter 1, Starting from Need (Taylor & Francis preview PDF)At Toyota, a machine automated with a human touch is one that is attached to an automatic stopping device
  5. Taiichi Ohno, Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production, Chapter 1, Starting from Need (Taylor & Francis preview PDF)the workers themselves should push the stop button to halt production if any abnormality appears.

Use it on your project

teardown-apply: hold "Stop the line" (pattern-stop-the-line) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/software-factory/ against my project

Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.

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