[gorb314]

From my understanding, poka-yoke addresses the problem where "[...] the mistakes are allowed to reach the customer".

In software, we know that the later a bug is caught, the more expensive (in terms of time / resources) it is to fix. So we want to catch bugs / mistakes earlier.

The "simple" idea that Poka-yoke introduces is to make it harder to make the mistake in the first place. If a physical component can be mounted more than one way, but there is only one correct way, then design it such that it is impossible to mount it incorrectly. This can be done by making the mounting holes for the part asymmetrical, for example.

IMO, in software a similar concept would be to fail early and fail hard.