> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.zookooree.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Loops

> The recurring cycles that keep the line honest: heartbeats, reviews, retrospectives, and re-certification.

A production line is not a straight path; it is a bundle of loops running at different frequencies. The stations move units forward; the loops keep the whole plant true. Each loop declares the artifact that proves it ran — because per [Thesis 3](/six-theses/andon-for-silence), a loop that stops looping is itself a defect, and the watchdog treats a missing loop-artifact exactly like a missing report.

## The loop catalogue

| Loop                   | Cadence                    | Artifact that proves it ran                           |
| ---------------------- | -------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- |
| Effect watchdog sweep  | Continuous / scheduled     | A clean pass, or an andon issue per violation         |
| Telemetry mining       | Daily                      | Lessons reflected back into the repo                  |
| Learning graduation    | Weekly                     | Germline PRs proposing standard-work changes          |
| Retro per unit         | Per unit                   | A retro whose final section changed the standard work |
| Re-certification sweep | On expiry and triggers     | Renewed or reopened certificates                      |
| Portability test       | Yearly, or on runtime pain | A changeover measurement for one certified unit       |

## Per-run learning and graduation

Row 12 of the compilation table lands here, at [Station 6](/stations/6-operate): the learning-file convention plus a weekly graduation job that proposes germline PRs. A lesson that appears across multiple run files gets baked into the standard work under full germline gates, and the learning files that taught it are retired. Insight flows upward on a schedule, not by accident.

## The obeya — one screen, four families of number

Row 15: the metrics board plus the decision log, fed by certificates, queue, and telemetry:

* **Flow:** WIP by station, queue age, lead time from work order to certificate, takt adherence
* **Quality:** first-pass yield, escaped defects (baseline zero — keep it), judge/human alignment rate — the trust metric that buys capacity
* **Corrosion:** stale-certificate count, oldest unmet re-certification, silence alarms fired and resolved
* **Economics:** cost per certified unit against target, reuse rate, kaizen-budget consumption — 10% of compute, actually spent
* **Banned:** lines of code, issue count, commit count, hours — vanity, by name

## WIP limits and takt

Row 16: board configuration plus an alert when WIP exceeds the Little's-Law bound derived from takt. Takt is set explicitly and low — 3 to 5 certified units per week — because the constraint is [the operator's attention](/six-theses/takt-time). The loop here is the pacing itself: a full cycle at takt with zero silent stalls is the plant's definition of running at rate — every gap in flow produces an alarm, and every alarm produces a response.

## Self-audit

| Claim                                                             | Source                              |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- |
| Daily telemetry mining; weekly graduation; learning files retired | docs/factory-design.md:156–157, 205 |
| Row 12: learning-file convention + weekly graduation job          | docs/factory-design.md:205          |
| Row 15: obeya dashboard fed by certificates, queue, telemetry     | docs/factory-design.md:208, 215–221 |
| Obeya contents and banned metrics                                 | docs/factory-design.md:217–221      |
| Row 16: WIP alert on Little's-Law bound; takt 3–5/week            | docs/factory-design.md:209, 75      |
| Zero silent stalls as the run-at-rate exit gate                   | docs/factory-design.md:273          |
| Yearly portability (SMED) test                                    | docs/factory-design.md:255          |
| Retro must change the standard work                               | docs/factory-design.md:237          |