The main purpose of an andon is to signal that some part of the system is no longer in normal operating mode. The immediate response should be to quickly assess the situation, and recover the process to the normal mode.
Many organizations, however, do not make that mental shift. They don’t have a clear sense of whether they are in the normal operating pattern, or in recovery mode.
Without that sense of mode, “recovery” can quickly become the norm, and a culture of working around problems develops. Sometimes we call this a “firefighting culture,” but I find that term regrettable, as it reflects poorly on actual firefighters.
In the andon driven environment, the andon is either on or off. That is, things are either operating as they should be (no andon) or they are not (andon is triggered).
All of this presumes, of course, that you have some idea what your normal operating pattern should be. Go and walk your shop floor or work area. What can you see happening?
Is what you see what you want to be happening? How do you know? What do you compare it against?
Can the people working there tell if they, and their process, are in the normal operating pattern, or in some other mode?
If they are recovering, do they know they are recovering? Are they striving to get things back to the normal operating mode; or are they striving to simply get the job done in spite of the immediate problem? Big, big difference here. This is what makes or breaks your continuous improvement effort.
Once the normal operating mode is restored (assuming you had one), are at least some of these incidents investigated down to root cause, with countermeasures tested by appropriate PDCA cycles and experiments?
What mode are you in right now?
How can you tell?