Shigeo Shingo

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Shigeo Shingō
SMED, P-Course, Toyota Production System

Shigeo Shingo (新郷 重夫, Shingō Shigeo, 1909–1990) was a Japanese

industrial engineer who was considered as the world’s leading expert on manufacturing practices and the Toyota Production System
.

Life and work

After having worked as a technician specializing in fusions at the Taiwanese railways in

SMED
.

Shingo may well be known better in the West than in Japan, as a result of his meeting Norman Bodek, an American entrepreneur and founder of Productivity Inc. In 1981 Bodek travelled to Japan to learn about the Toyota Production System, coming across books by Shingō, who as an external consultant had been teaching Industrial engineering courses at Toyota since 1955. Since 1947, Shingō had been involved all over Japan in the training of thousands of people, who joined his courses on the fundamental techniques of analysis and improvement of the operational activities in factories (among which the P-Course, or Production Course).[1]

Shingō had written his Study of the Toyota Production System in Japanese and had it translated into English in 1980. Bodek took as many copies of this book as he could to the USA and arranged to translate Shingo's other books into English, eventually having his original study re-translated. Bodek also brought Shingō to lecture in the USA and developed one of the first Western lean manufacturing consultancy practices with Shingō's support.

The relevance of his contribution has sometimes been doubted, but it is substantially confirmed by the opinions of his contemporaries,

Just-in-time, and the “pull” production system, which were created by Toyota and Mr.Taiichi Ohno and still remain a strong logical and practical basis for the lean production and lean thinking
management approaches. The myth prevails that Shingo invented the Toyota Production System but what can be stated is that he did document the system. Shingo contributed to the formalization of some aspects of the management philosophy known as the Toyota Production System (TPS), developed and applied in Japan since the 1950s and later implemented in a huge number of companies in the world.

In 1988, the

Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence that recognizes world-class, lean organizations and operational excellence
.

The theorist of important innovations related to Industrial engineering, such as Poka-yoke and the Zero Quality Control, Shingō could influence fields other than manufacturing. For example, his concepts of SMED, mistake-proofing, and "zero quality control" (eliminating the need for inspection of results) have all been applied in the sales process engineering[3]

Shingo was the author of several books including: A Study of the Toyota Production System; Revolution in Manufacturing: The SMED System; Zero Quality Control: Source Inspection and the Poka-yoke System; The Sayings of Shigeo Shingo: Key Strategies for Plant Improvement; Non-Stock Production: The Shingo System for Continuous Improvement and The Shingo Production Management System: Improving Process Functions.

Education

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. ^ (in Japanese) JMAグループの原点・JMA Group no genten -The DNA of JMA Group, edited by JMA Group renkei sokushin iinkai, Tokyo 2010 - pp 34-35
  2. ^ e.g.: Akira Kōdate
  3. ^ Paul H. Selden (1997). Sales Process Engineering: A Personal Workshop. Milwaukee, WI: ASQ Quality Press. pp. 94–97.

Further reading

External links


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