Forbes.com readers and editors rank Sakichi Toyoda as the 13th most influential businessman of all time. Sakichi Toyoda was a weaver who, in 1924, invented a loom that would detect an error and automatically cease production, preventing the creation of defective goods. He later sold the patent on his machine to a British firm for about $150,000. That money was used to help his son found a start-up, Toyota (nyse: TM - news - people ), which would become the world's second-biggest carmaker. Toyoda's innovation of instilling human judgment on machines, also known as automation or Jidoka, would be adopted to his son's automobile enterprise--and then almost every industrial enterprise--cutting down on waste, improving customer relations, revealing problems and conserving resources. 　　 　　

　　福布斯网站（Forbes.com）的读者和编辑将丰田佐吉列为第13位有史以来最有影响力的商人。
　　丰田佐吉是个织布工。1924年他发明了可以检测出错误并自动停机的一种织机，以阻止次品的出现。之后，他将应用了这种专利的机器以约15万美元的价格卖给了一家英国公司。这些钱用于帮助他的儿子创建了一个企业，即丰田，成为了世界第二大的汽车制造商。
　　丰田的这种将人的判断灌输给机器的发明就是自动化，或者叫自動化（日语发音Jidoka），被用于他儿子的汽车制造厂，进而几乎所有的制造工厂，减少了浪费，改进了与消费者的关系，揭露了问题，而且保护了资源。 　　
　　P. S.　美国人忌讳13这个数字，所以，他们把这个数字给了一个日本人。日本人要倒霉了。