Discover Excellence

A facility-wide improvement initiative is expensive in terms of both time and money. Perhaps the most disappointing thing about them is that they often end up as temporary measures that may produce early results but are unsustainable in the long run. The unseen cost is that after they see such initiatives come and go, employees begin to see them as futile, temporary annoyances rather than the permanent improvements they are meant to be. The Shingo Model™ begins with culture informed by operational excellence principles that lead to an understanding of what aligns systems and tools and can set any organization on a path toward enterprise excellence with sustainable continuous improvement.The Shingo Model is not an additional program or another initiative to implement. Instead, it introduces Shingo Guiding Principles on which to anchor current initiatives. Ultimately, the Shingo Model informs a new way of thinking that creates the capability to consistently deliver ideal results to all stakeholders. This is enterprise excellence – the level of excellence achieved by Shingo Prize recipients.In Discover Excellence: An Overview of the Shingo Model and Its Guiding Principles, readers will learn the basics of the Shingo Model, discover the Three Insights of Enterprise Excellence™, and explore how the Shingo Guiding Principles inform the kind of ideal behaviors that lead to sustainable results. This book is the introduction to the Shingo Model and prepares the reader for a deeper dive into the Shingo Guiding Principles.

Dr. Gerhard Plenert is the former director of executive education at the Shingo Institute, a program in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. As a consultant, Dr. Plenert has helped organizations execute operational and supply chain transformations for more than 20 years. Dr. Plenert was also a tenured full professor at California State University, Chico; and a professor at BYU, BYU-Hawaii, the University of Malaysia, and the University of San Diego.