Meet Ken Snyder | Executive Director, Shingo Institute

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ken Snyder and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ken, what do you attribute your success to?
The Shingo Institute is the home of the Shingo Prize. The Prize started in 1988. It recognizes organizations that have achieved the highest level of organizational and operational excellence. Because many of the best organizations in the world apply for the Shingo Prize, we get an opportunity to interact with these great organizations.

Some of the key factors include:
1) the focus on culture – i.e., the behaviors of the people in the organization
2) how organizations achieve sustainable excellence by following guiding principles.
3) how the systems in the organization drive behaviors for good or bad.

We study these great organizations and share what we learn through our curriculum.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Despite being a program in the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University, the Shingo Institute is required to be financially self-sufficient. We get no money from the university or from the state of Utah. We engage in 3 different activities: 1) Recognition. We administer the Prize. We ask organizations that apply for the Prize to pay the direct costs associated with doing the assessment.
2) Research. The research we do is largely subsidized by our other activities.
3) Education. We charge for our executive education offerings. This is how we are able to be financially self-sufficient. Our primary educational offering is a series of workshops. The workshops are designed to teach executives and managers how to achieve organizational and operational excellence.

We don’t teach the workshops directly. We have 35 licensed affiliate partners around the world who teach the workshops. We develop the curriculum. And we train the trainers.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
From an Institute point of view, this is one of the things we do. We run a series of week-long study tours. People learn a lot when they get a chance to see excellence in different settings. Popular destinations include Japan, Ireland, and some different places in the US.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
The Institute is named after Shigeo Shingo. He was a consultant hired by Toyota in the 1950s to help them develop what is known as the Toyota Production System (TPS). He worked with Toyota off and on for over 25 years. He wrote 17 books – including one of the seminal works about TPS. He created many of the terms used in “Lean Manufacturing.”

I started my own journey in this field in the late 1970s. One of my professors, Mike Yoshino, was instrumental in helping me get started. I worked in Japan for a few years, and then for about a decade for a Japanese company in the US. After 30 years in industry, it was my honor to join the faculty at Utah State University and get involved with the Shingo Institute.

Website: shingo.org

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/snyderken/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ShingoOrg