Shingo: Overview of Organisational Excellence

For a business to be successful, it must never stop improving. Yet such continuous improvement is far from easy – in fact, 95% of lean implementations fail to sustain.

This is something our Leadership and Enterprise Excellence Coach, George Donaldson, has experienced first hand. Here, he provides an overview of how the Shingo Model helps facilitate continuous improvement, as well as how our supporting workshop can help you leverage it.

Understanding the Shingo Model

Numerous leaders make the mistake of using short-termism and quick wins to prompt change. But the only way to bring about real change is to adopt new ways of thinking. Whatever the industry, a business can transform itself by creating a sustainable culture of organisational excellence. And this is reinforced through the Shingo Model’s framework.

Over the years, I’ve seen the Shingo Model produce countless successes. This is mostly down to the fact that it’s built around prominent thought leadership, along with decades of close work and study with some of the world’s greatest organisations.

A key part of the Shingo Model is aligning culture with the 10 guiding principles, which are categorised into the following three dimensions:

• Cultural enablers – This homes in on people and the value they deliver. It requires you to respect all individuals and lead with humility.
• Continuous improvement – This focuses on innovation, learning and flexibility. You’ll strive for perfection across your whole organisation, embrace Shingo’s scientific thinking and assure quality at the source.
• Enterprise alignment – This centres on aligning every value stream (both horizontally and vertically) to what matters most. For this dimension, you should think systematically and create constancy of purpose, as well as value for the customer.

These 10 principles influence the other elements of the Shingo Model: tools, systems, results and culture, and the relationships between them.

Our Shingo-dedicated workshop

‘Introduction to Organisational Excellence and the Shingo Model’ delivers an overview of organisational excellence, and provides key thinking from leading industry players.

The course also unpicks the Shingo Model, as well as its Three Insights and Guiding Principles.

On the programme, I work with delegates to help them discuss and recognise where those 95% of lean implementations went wrong. You’ll take a deeper look at the purpose of business, come up with strategies for continuous improvement, and identify how systems drive ideal behaviours to produce the best results.

What’s more, you’ll also get the opportunity to pose questions to previous Shingo Prize winners (the world’s highest standard for organisational excellence) in an open Q&A forum. Each recipient has worked to align their entire organisation and create a culture of excellence, so delegates should find it an incredibly inspiring experience.

Ultimately, our workshop provides you with the knowledge and skills to create your very own Enterprise Excellence Roadmap capable of driving your company towards success.

Start your Shingo journey

The Manufacturing Institute is the longest standing affiliate of the Shingo Institute in Europe. As such, we’re uniquely placed to help you use the Shingo Model to leverage your strengths and opportunities, and reach a sustainable culture of organisational excellence.

Our virtual workshop includes a mix of interactive sessions, from presentations and case studies to group activities. You can find out when the next course starts here, together with further information about the module and how it works.

If you have any questions about the workshop or the other training programmes we offer, get in touch with The Manufacturing Institute team today. We’re always happy to help.