Doing The Poka-Yoke

Call it what you will, Murphy's Law, or Fate, or The Dark Side Of The Force: Stuff just goes wrong.

Every engineer has tales to tell of plans that should have worked, and ended up being spectacular failures.

These wry words on the subject come to us via the Harvard Business Review.

Michael Schrage makes great sense, and this article is well worth the investment of time and energy.

So much of what prudent people do is a daily dance of the 'Poka-Yoke'. They goof-proof the processes that could, if neglected, come back to bite them. They rotate the tires and change the oil on the family car, and get the brakes done before they're in dodgy condition, for instance. They count the sponges twice before the surgeons open up the patient, and twice again before they close. It's boring stuff that makes life function uneventfully.  The car doesn't end up wrapped around the tree, the patient recovers without complications, and goes home. Uneventful.

Stuff still happens, but so much more would come unravelled sans those prudent people in all corners of the culture.

Three (subdued, careful) cheers for uneventful, boring functionality.