ABSTRACT
In 1991, the Exxon business that I had the great good fortune to lead received the Shingo Prize, described by BusinessWeek magazine as “the Nobel Prize for manufacturing.” Although the Shingo Prize was given “for manufacturing excellence,” the criteria were then, and still are, based largely on the work of the prize’s namesake, Shigeo Shingo, one of the primary architects of an innovative system of manufacturing variously known as the Toyota Production System or Just in Time and known today as Lean Manufacturing.
