Jidoka: Built-in Quality

Jidoka (自働化) means “automation with a human touch” - the practice of building quality into the process itself.

Core Principle

Stop the line when a defect is detected. Fix the root cause before continuing.

In Batuta, Jidoka manifests as automatic quality gates that halt the pipeline when issues are found.

Jidoka in Batuta

Pre-commit Hooks

# Automatic checks before every commit
cargo fmt --check     # Formatting
cargo clippy          # Linting
cargo test            # Tests
pmat demo-score       # Quality gate

If any check fails, the commit is blocked.

Quality Gates

Stop-the-Line Examples

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
// Jidoka: Fail fast on type errors
fn transpile(source: &str) -> Result<String, Error> {
    let ast = parse(source)?;  // Stop if parse fails
    let typed = typecheck(ast)?;  // Stop if types invalid
    generate(typed)
}
}

Benefits

1. Early detection - Issues caught immediately
2. Root cause focus - Fix problems, not symptoms
3. No defect propagation - Bad code never reaches production
4. Team awareness - Everyone knows quality status

Implementation

Andon Board

Batuta’s diagnostics module provides Andon-style status:

🟢 Green  - All systems healthy
🟡 Yellow - Attention needed
🔴 Red    - Stop the line

Automated Response

When issues are detected:

1. Pipeline stops
2. Team is notified
3. Root cause is investigated
4. Fix is verified
5. Pipeline resumes

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