The text states that a manufacturing plant or a service facility can be seen as a network of processing stages. Also, material or customers flow through this network and emerge as finished products or served customers. One TPS "pillar" to achieve a synchronized flow in this network is "autonomation" (a.k.a jidoka). According to our text, autonomation is best defined as: Group of answer choices decreasing the process variability in the flow rate improve process flows through efficient plant layout Automation to recognize or prevent problems automatically Increase process flexibility by reducing equipment changeover times