Shigeo Shingo is a Japanese industrial engineer who develops and leads manufacturing practices in the Toyota production system (TPS).
Shigeo Shingo was born in 1909 in Sagacity, Japan. He studied at Yamanashi Technical University and graduated as an engineer in 1930. Shingo started his first professional work experience at a railway company in Taipei. In 1945 he started to work at the Japan Management Association in Tokyo. He starts working as a consultant in the management and development of production processes in factories and industries. He worked on improvement activities at Mazda in 1950 and Mitsubishi in 1957.
In 1955, Shigeo Shingo gives a seminar on production systems. Toyota manager and Toyota Production system builder Taiichi Ohno hears these seminars and invites Shigeo Shingo to work at Toyota. Shigeo Shingo contributed greatly to Toyota in establishing Kaizen and Toyota Production system. He taught about 80 classes over 20 years, training thousands of Toyota engineers.
I have made it a principle to introduce our masters that we need to meet in your operational excellence journey and share with you what they have contributed to the industry. The first person I want to introduce is Shigeo Shingo.
Shigeo Shingo worked to prevent human error in industrial processes in the 1960s. Shigeo Shingo was the first to apply the poka-yoke technique in order to avoid forgetting the assembly of parts and similar errors in production processes. I will explain the first applications, history and detailed information of Poka-yoke technique in my next article.
He worked on efficiency improvements of press machines working in production. During the model change of the presses, he noticed that there were big losses during the mold change. Sometimes mold change times were even more than the total production time. The technique developed by Shigeo Shingo to improve these losses was named SMED, which consists of the first letters of
Single Minute Exchange of Die.
Using SMED technique, he succeeded in reducing the mold change times in presses to single minutes instead of 1 to 2 hours at the Toyota factory in 1969.
Shingo’s work in the west began when he met Norman Bodek. Norman Bodek was a teacher, consultant, author and Publisher. He has published over 100 Japanese management books in English, including the works of Taiichi Ohno and Dr. Shigeo Shingo. In 1981, Bodek traveled to Japan to learn about the Toyota Production System, coming across books by Shingō. Norman Bodek developed one of the first Western lean manufacturing consultancy practices with Shingo’s support.
I would like to quote an interview he gave about Norman Bodek Shigeo Shingo.
Interviewer ; Would you tell us about Dr. Shingo?
Norman Bodek : To attain the goal of continuous improvement Shingo was relentless in stimulating people to change for the better. “Can’t be done “and ” impossible,” were not part of his vocabulary. He worked into his eighties; never retired.
Whenever Dr. Shingo left a client he gave them homework. Just like at school we need to learn and work afterwards in our quest for competitive excellence. Dr. Shingo expected his clients to have the work completed before he came back a month later. He didn’t want them to waste time and he didn’t want them to waste his time.
Interviewer : Not everyone makes cars. How did Shingo approach other industries?
Norman Bodek : Every industry has waste. Every industry can change and improve. Lean applies to hospitals, call centers, hotels, everyone who wants to be more competitive.
Shingo traveled in Europe and North America on many lectures, visits and assignments. He assisted several U.S. and European firms in Toyota Production System implementation. Shingo has written 14 major books and hundreds of important papers on manufacturing.
In 1988, the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University recognized Dr. Shingō for his lifetime accomplishments and created the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence that recognizes world-class, lean organizations and operational excellence.
The Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence has 10 guiding principles of operational excellence ;
1.Respect Every Individual
2.Lead with Humility
3.Seek Perfection
4.Embrace Scientific Thinking
5.Focus on Process
6.Assure Quality at the Source
7.Improve Flow & Pull
8.Think Systemically
9.Create Constancy of Purpose
10.Create Value for the Customer
The issue we talk about the most these days is sustainability. For a sustainable world, we should apply his principles and reduce waste. We need this much more than yesterday.
I want to share a book and I think you will like to read it.
Complex Management Systems and the Shingo Model
Foundations of Operational Excellence and Supporting Tools
Taylor and Francis (2019)
