Customer Reviews

The Shingo Production Management System: Improving Process Functions (Manufacturing & Production)

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In his final book, Dr Shingo tries to pull his ideas together and clear some misconceptions. He works hard to drive certain points home. The material is good and worth reading, unfortunately, it seems to lack proper editing to organize the content well and eliminate repetition (a part of driving points home). I can only guess that it was rushed to completion before his death. He remains my favorite author on `lean' topics, and I greatly appreciate his work.

Shingeo Shingo is the guru behind manufacturing concepts such as SMED (Single-Minute Exchange of Die, to simplify changeover setup times) and Poka-Yoke (failsafe mechanisms embedded into the production process or set-up tasks, to eliminate any possibility of error). Therefore his authority in terms of improving process functions is undisputable.

Now, as far as this book goes, after you have gone past the first half it begins to turn repetitive (maybe it's a poor translation, or maybe poor editing, but it hurts the book) and you begin finding some concepts that popped up earlier in the book. Still, I was able to gather some very useful ideas... That's how this book is: if you stick to it, past the repetition, even in the numerous examples Mr. Shingo provides, you will find a wealth of ideas to improve your enterprise's processes. Do I recommend you buy it? Not really. I find it very expensive for what you can get out of it, but it certainly is worth getting in the Public Library or browsing (if you can find it, since it's over ten years old) ...