There are people whose efforts and creative thinking made a great contribution to the progress of the manufacturing industry. The land of the rising sun gave us Shigeo Shingo’s outstanding talent for mathematical problem-solving and managing processes. He was born in Saga in 1909 and his life was quite long and fruitful. Shingo passed away almost thirty years ago but his ideas keep living and developing as they became a significant part of the lean production approach. His contribution was so great that Utah State University started giving an annual Shingo Award to the companies and individuals who placed themselves on record in the manufacturing field (Hamilton, 2016). Many engineers and performance enhancers believe this award to be as honorary as the Nobel Prize.
The main point of Shingo’s hard work during his entire life was searching the ways to increase the efficiency of quality control and to decrease the percent of pre-consumer waste. He started his way as an engineering genius when he was working in Taipei Railway Company and designing a project aimed at reducing the cost of manufacturing operations and saving resources. A few years later, developing new methods of quality control became the primary idea of his field of interest. To research the very substance of the issue, he conducted a thorough analysis of the pros and contras of quality control processes in a few hundred companies (Ciarniene & Vienazindiene, 2013). By the end of the 1950s, he became known as a talented engineer due to his work on JIT (Just In Time) concept. This concept was designed to provide strict control of managing such resources as semi-finished products and time in order to have no need in safety stocks and improve the organization of the manufacturing process on all levels. This system requires keeping the workplace in order, small-lot manufacturing, comprehensive quality control, and working in smaller groups. It is widely used by leading producing countries as it has shown great results (Shenoy, 2016).
Shingo also worked for Toyota and Mitsubishi corporations helping them to obtain significant results in reducing the time of essential manufacturing operations. He managed to put all his knowledge into practice, developing the new concept of quality control named ‘Defects=0’. This approach was successfully incorporated in many companies’ working processes and the result was amazing as it really became possible to produce zero defect products due to that (Wang, 2013). Since that period, many giant corporations have started to apply Shingo’s inventions and this worldwide popularity is the best marker of their efficiency. Besides his engineering practice, Shingo also focused on working as a management advisor for famous automotive production companies that became able to gain a royal profit with help of his knowledge and experience. There is another concept that is believed to be one of his greatest achievements. Single Minute Exchange of Dies or SMED belongs to the methods that comprise the principle of lean production targeted at production waste minimization (Pascal, 2015). It involves preparing the equipment for fast running the products one by one to increase productivity and avoid additional adjustments to save time (Levinson, 2013).
There is no doubt that Shigeo Shingo was a man who managed to find his vocation. Due to his hard work, the field of managing the manufacturing process became able to push on to the next level. It is beyond argument that his ideas will be used and accomplished for obtaining even greater results.
References
Ciarniene, R. & Vienazindiene, M. (2013). Lean manufacturing implementation: The main challenges and barriers. Rural Business and Infrastructure Development, 35(1), 43-49.
Hamilton, B. (2016). Mistake-proofing mistakes [Blog post]. Web.
Levinson, W. (2013). Lean management system LMS:2012: A framework for continual lean improvement. London, UK: CRS Press.
Pascal, D. (2015). Lean production simplified: A plain-language guide to the world’s most powerful production system. London, UK: CRS Press.
Shenoy, V. (2016). Error proofing: Effective tool for output efficiency. International Journal of Engineering Research and Modern Education, 1(1), 504-507.
Wang, K. (2013). Towards zero-defect manufacturing (ZDM) – a data mining approach. Advances in Manufacturing, 1(1), 62-74.