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Harmonizing Improvement Approaches

October 12, 2025 – Bruce Hamilton

My Improvement Journey 

During my long association with the Shingo Institute, I’ve been called a Shingo-file and a Toyota Production System (TPS) ideologue—and both are badges I wear with pride. I’ve read and studied every English translation of Shigeo Shingo’s works until the bindings frayed, and while self-study of Shingo’s books helped me appreciate the creative potential of front-line employees, my experience learning TPS hands-on at a Toyota Production System Support Center (TSSC) project company from 1996 to 1999 challenged and shaped me in life-altering ways. There, Toyota’s coaching dragged me through a keyhole, and I was finally able to see the role of management clearly.

I have also been influenced by thinkers outside of TPS. In particular, a chance reading of Eli Goldratt’s The Goal in 1986 became the seminal event that launched my organization’s Shingo journey. Goldratt’s book essentially unfroze the status quo thinking of a fifty-year-old manufacturer. Inspired, I bought copies of The Goal, first for my managers and then for every one of our 400 employees. A long-time factory employee thanked me and quipped that it was the first book she’d read since high school.

In 1989, Deming Prize winner Ryuji Fukuda introduced me to the X-type matrix, which was also developed outside of Toyota. Fukuda’s emphasis on structured, measurable policy deployment changed the way my organization set and shared our goals. Siloed department planning was replaced by a cross-functional approach, emphasizing both horizontal and vertical alignment, and our culture transformed from combative to collaborative, focused on amplifying frontline Kaizen.

Dr. Shingo’s influence was certainly dominant in my organization when we received the Shingo Prize in 1990, but ideas from Goldratt and Fukuda were also fundamental. An eclectic approach to improvement felt natural, and this was strengthened by engagement with a wider community of practice and diverse methodologies, including the following: 

• Design for Manufacture and Assembly
• Variety Reduction Process
• 7 QC Tools
• Design of Experiments
• Total Productive Maintenance 

As process improvement spread throughout the company, we selected countermeasures that best addressed the problems at hand. Shingo referred to these simply as “better methods.” The TPS House metaphor covered many of these, but not all. Diverse perspectives produced more robust improvement throughout our site. 

Such openness to different improvement paths has long been a hallmark of the Shingo Institute. As a Shingo examiner, I’ve visited many organizations that have achieved exceptional results by combining a variety of improvement methods, such as Lean Six Sigma, agile, and visual systems. 

Harmonizing Diverse Improvement Approaches 

Over the past three decades, the list of improvement methodologies has only grown. In July 2023, seven non-profit Lean organizations met at MIT to reflect on the future of work and continuous improvement. The group was later formalized as Future of People at Work (FPW; https://www.fpwork.org/). 
 
My personal interest in blending the best of many methods drew me to a sub-group of FPW, Adjacent Communities, which focuses on harmonizing the various improvement approaches. 

Already, our discoveries have been fascinating. Organizations that are willing can explore different improvement approaches and, by reframing them as additive rather than competing, capture the best characteristics of each. The purpose statement of Adjacent Communities outlines the group’s intent:

We help organizations navigate the complexity of multiple improvement methodologies by providing clarity about when and how different approaches can work together. 

Other Future of People at Work Initiatives 

Adjacent Communities is only one of many working groups exploring the future of people at work. Other groups are addressing topics such as

• Effective outreach to CEOs 
• The expectations of a new generation 
• The impact of technology, especially AI 
• New ways of working, including remote and hybrid models 
• Higher education application 
• Industrial tourism, a best practices sharing network 
• Marketing and branding of Lean 

Join us at the Northeast Lean Conference 

If you are interested in learning more about Adjacent Communities—or any other groups listed above—consider joining us at the Northeast Lean Conference later this month. 

As a collaborating member of FPW, the GBMP Consulting Group will host several of these working groups at the conference on October 27–28, 2025 in Manchester, New Hampshire. Breakout and information sharing sessions will be sponsored for interested attendees. Learn more at http://www.northeastleanconference.org.