Two Shigeo Shingo classics

Two classics from Shigeo Shingo, Fundamental Principles of Lean Manufacturing, By Shigeo Shingo; originally Fundamental Principles of Continuous Improvement 1977; this edition PCS Press,  edition  2009, AND

Kaizen and The Art of Creative Thinking… The Scientific Thinking Mechanism  Shigeo Shingo, PCS Press 20007, originally Idea wo Nigasuna 1959

The two challenges to reading Fundamental Principles of Lean Manufacturing, originally titled Fundamental Principles of Continuous  Improvement will be: 1.       Integrating all the separate ideas into a cohesive approach to manufacturing over 30 years after Mr. Shingo’s first edition of this book, what we called at Rath and Strong “the green book.” 

Readers will find that although what we called the “Japlish” has disappeared and the book has been reformatted for readability, some basic questions inevitably arise above the basics.

Each of the books five sections is divided into numbered sub-sections.  The end of the book contains a great reflection from the author Shigeo Shingo, plus an index for repeated references. Readers will find themselves moving back and forth between the various points Shigeo makes, punctuated by Shingo-isms like:

                “ Non-stock production's foundational principal is that stock is evil.”

                “Transportation is a crime – those who lack this conviction tend to be satisfied by    reducing transportation through passive measures such as forklifts”!

                “When making technical improvements, it is extremely important to be revolutionary in our thinking.”

How would Mr. Shingo react some twenty years after his death if he were to once again visit, as he did so frequently, some up-to-date plants in the US and see a certain loss of momentum in revolutionary technical improvements?

The Mill Girl must admit that this book, despite its updates, remains lots of fun, every statement from the Master a great challenge of interpretation and practical application.  Should we work on work flow and reducing waste first, or would results be biggest if we focused on Non-Stock Production?  I can say that the initial puzzles we tried to decipher at Rath and Strong, particularly starting with Briggs and Stratton in Milwaukee, revolved around elimination of piles and crates of excess inventories like crankshafts and carburetor parts.  One thing led to another, and Mac McCulloch and Nick Edwards “played with” the MRP system to stop, or control, the infernal machine.  The Mill Girl got busy with purchasing, the front end of The Infernal Machine that continued to drive in raw materials and component parts during the two-year planning cycle, long after actual requirements appeared on the floor.  But putting the whole picture together, before and after the pilot manufacturing line, remained a challenge that we took to other companies. 

2.       Lean.  While Shingo collected over 30 years of manufacturing ideas, starting around 1937, in this master work, the ideas were more hardcore suggestions that could actually drive how changeovers were done, or how production areas were laid out or how quality was managed.

But Mr. Shingo died in 1990, around the time JIT had taken hold in much of US industry, but well before Lean as an umbrella term wrapped all manufacturing improvement efforts into one big vision.  The areas of strategic sourcing and Information Technology have not been smoothly wrapped into Shingo’s thinking.  In fact, MRP/ERP and push vs. pull systems arguments have sharpened since his death and you will not find the answers to these more current questions in the Shingo books.   Lean thinking has likewise not wrapped commodity management, spend management, or systems architecture for the lean enterprise into a cohesive map of advanced manufacturing. 

Shigeo Shingo Kaizen and The Art of Creative Thinking The Scientific Thinking Mechanism,  originally published as  Idea wo Nigasuna 1959, Enna and PCS Press 2007

This masterpiece is a wonderful look at how a Japanese classically trained industrial engineer illustrated the basics with questions and memorable stories taken from Shigeo Shingo’s over 60 years of working with industry.  Think of this book as an unrefined look at so many small achievements that had big results – the soap machine, a battery recharging process, threshing machines, steel rods.    This is where the subtitle, “The Art of Creative Thinking” illustrates Mr. Shingo’s approach to kaizen, making things, processes, flows, better. 

A simple act of adding a few drops of mouthwash to his rinsing water glass in the morning, and finding the mix undissolved, triggered a creative solution.  But first, two other possible solutions popped up – use the handle of the toothbrush as a stirrer?  Or use his finger?    “After some thinking, I placed a hand on top of the glass and shook it.  It was not the best idea I ever had!  The next morning, I had a better idea:  put a few drops of mouthwash into my glass fist, and then pour water.  The problem of mixing vanished, simply by switching the order!” 

This simple example illustrates the kaizen approach to problem-solving.    Although there may be three or four initial solutions, there is really only one best answer.  The fun of this book is watching the Master think through the first solutions until he arrives at the best and final answer.  He’s not teaching us how to be creative here by talking at us, he’s showing us, and that makes all the difference.   

Read this book because it’s not the most philosophical one out there, it’s a fun way to think through and learn how Shingo developed his own approach to creative problem-solving. 

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