Autonomation transfers a level of human intelligence to automated machinery. Machines thus detect even a single defective part and immediately stop while asking for help. The concept was pioneered by Sakichi Toyoda at the turn of the twentieth century. He invented automatic looms that stopped instantly when any thread broke. This permitted one operator to oversee many machines without risk of producing large amounts of defective cloth. Taiichi Ohno considered Jidoka (Autonomation is one variant) as one of the two pillars of the Toyota Production System. See also jidoka.

The purpose of autonomation is the rapid or immediate address, identification and correction of mistakes that occur in a process. For instance rather than waiting until the end of a production line to inspect a finished product, autonomation may be imployed at early steps in the process to reduce the amount of work that is added to a defective product. A worker who is self-inspecting their own work, or source-inspecting the work produced immediately before their work station is encouraged to stop the line when a defect is found. This detection is the first step in Jidoka. A machine performing the same defect detection process is engaged in autonomation.