Autonomation describes a feature of machine design to effect the principle of jidoka (自働化)（じどうか jidōka), used in the Toyota Production System (TPS) and lean manufacturing.
The purpose of autonomation is that it makes possible the rapid or immediate address, identification and correction of mistakes that occur in a process.
To complete Jidoka, not only is the defect corrected in the product where discovered, but the process is evaluated and changed to remove the possibility of making the same mistake again.
[4] Jeffrey Liker and David Meier indicate that Jidoka or "the decision to stop and fix problems as they occur rather than pushing them down the line to be resolved later" is a large part of the difference between the effectiveness of Toyota and other companies who have tried to adopt lean manufacturing.
The halting causes slowed production but it is believed that this helps to detect a problem earlier and avoids the spread of bad practices.
In the Toyota Production System, the second character is replaced with 働（どう dou） "work", which is a character derived by adding a radical representing "human" to the original 動. Zenjidoka (全自働化) is described as "taking jidoka all the way to the customer" and refers to extended practices in which sales, service and technical staff also have power to interrupt production to correct faults.