Few individuals have contributed more to the development of total quality management (TQM), just-in-time manufacturing (JIT), and Lean manufacturing as Dr. Shigeo Shingo.

Many years before these ideas became popular in the western world, Dr. Shingo wrote about ensuring quality at the source, flowing value to customers, working with zero inventories, rapidly setting up machines through the system of “single-minutes exchange of die” (SMED), and going to the actual workplace to grasp the true situation there (“going to gemba”).

Over the course of his life, Dr. Shingo wrote and published 18 books discussing these and other topics, seven of which have been translated from Japanese into English. He also worked extensively with Toyota executives, especially Mr. Taiichi Ohno, who collaborated with Dr. Shingo to apply these concepts.

Always on the cutting edge of new ideas, Dr. Shingo envisioned collaborating with an organization to further his life’s work through research, practical-yet-rigorous education, and a program for recognizing the best in organizational excellence throughout the world.

In 1988, Dr. Shingo received an honorary doctorate of management from Utah State University in Logan, Utah, due to the efforts of Professor Vernon Buehler, an early advocate of Dr. Shingo's teachings. Later that year, Dr. Shingo's ambitions were realized when the Shingo Prize was organized and incorporated as part of the university due to a generous gift by Norman Bodek. The intention was to set a rigorous standard toward which organizations might aspire.

After years of assessing various organizations throughout the world, we began to understand more clearly the difference between organizations that were successful in sustaining cultures of continuous improvement and those that were not. After much study and deep evaluation of our findings, we developed the Shingo Model. The accompanying Shingo Guiding Principles and Three Insights of Organizational Excellence were later developed. Now the Shingo Prize is awarded to organizations that have robust key systems driving behavior closer to the ideal, as informed by the principles of organizational excellence and measured by strong key performance indicator (KPI) and key behavioral indicator (KBI) trends and levels.

While the Shingo Prize remains an integral part of the work of the Shingo Institute, the scope has expanded to include a focus on research, various educational offerings, such as conferences, webinars, podcasts, benchmarking visits, study tours, and the Shingo workshop series. The Shingo workshops are taught by our growing network of Shingo Licensed Affiliates from around the world. In conjunction with these workshops, each have a book that has been published or is in the process of being published.

In these efforts, the focus at the Shingo Institute is unique in the world. Its goal is to help every organization reach excellence wherever it may be along that path. 

Mr. Shingo’s experience in China started when he was appointed president of Toyota’s joint venture operation in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, in early 1999. Mr. Shingo ran the joint venture company for three years before moving to Beijing to join Toyota’s China office. After a little over two years working in that office, Mr. Shingo was appointed president of Hino Motors in China, including the joint venture production facility in Guangzhou, China. Mr. Shingo’s final assignment in China was president of the Toyota Research and Service Center, also located in Guangzhou. Mr. Shingo returned to Japan after 13 years in China.

The Shingo Model ™ is based on the teachings of Ritsuo’s father Dr. Shigeo Shingo, namesake of the Shingo Institute, a program in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Dr. Shingo helped create and write about many aspects of the revolutionary practices around operational excellence, many of which were incorporated into the renowned Toyota Production System. Mr. Shingo learned his leadership lessons from his father—something he readily admitted. He was a true practitioner of the Shingo Model principles. After 42 years with Toyota in various positions around the world, Mr. Shingo ended his career as president of the Institute of Management Improvement, a company started by his father. In addition to helping the Shingo Institute expand its work, he helped many organizations around the world.

Beginning in 2009 and continuing until his death in 2023, Mr. Shingo was actively involved in the work of the Shingo Institute. He served on the Shingo Executive Advisory Board, spoke at Shingo conferences, helped lead study tours, and helped develop video training materials. He interacted in many ways with the Shingo Institute community as a teacher, mentor, and friend. In 2016, he wrote a book called My Leadership: The China Years and assigned publication rights to the Shingo Institute.