What is Shingo on Shingo about?
September 8, 2026 – the Shingo Institute
Shigeo Shingo’s teachings illuminate the Shingo Guiding Principles. In addition to taking a deep dive into these insights, Shingo On Shingo, a book soon-to-be-published by Productivity Press, also addresses questions such as “What can we learn from what Shingo has to tell us?” and “Are Shingo’s teachings relevant in the twenty-first century?”
Who was Shigeo Shingo?
Shigeo Shingo was a teacher and consultant who contributed to significant improvements at Toyota and many other organizations. From the mid-1950s until the early 1980s, Shingo trained more than 3,000 Toyota managers and influenced the development of the Toyota Production System (TPS).
Shingo wrote 17 books, including a breakthrough work about TPS that details some of the system’s revolutionary manufacturing concepts: just-in-time (JIT), pokayoke (a word invented by Shingo), Single-Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED), jidōka, and heijunka (production leveling). Of Shingo’s books, seven were published in English. In 1988, he received an honorary doctorate from Utah State University and gave permission to the university to launch the Shingo Prize.
About the Authors
The authors have been followers of Shingo for many years. As the Executive Director of the Shingo Institute, Ken Snyder spent several weeks each year with Shigeo Shingo’s son, Ritsuo, until his passing in 2023. Ritsuo Shingo shared many stories about his father, the clients his father consulted with, his books, and so on. Ken also met a few times each year with Toyota veterans and heard stories about Shingo’s training classes at Toyota. Ken has read all of Shingo’s books that are available in English as well as some in Japanese. Although Ken did not know Shigeo Shingo personally, he has vicariously come to know him well.
Drew came to know Shigeo Shingo through years of personal interaction with him—first as the primary translator of Shingo’s books into English, next as a mediator between Shingo and organizational leaders in the West, and then, by degrees, as an apprentice to Shingo. Drew was an unlikely disciple of the master. When they met in the early 1980s, Drew was unfamiliar with the world of production. Shingo proved a generous teacher. As their collaboration deepened, Drew’s give-and-take with Shingo came to reveal shared interests and seeded an appreciation in Drew of Shingo’s commitment to improvement. Drew’s thinking came to be shaped by his association with Shingo.