ABSTRACT
Many people who followed the Shingo Institute's recipe for excellence found it difficult to distinguish between tools and systems. Implementing carefully considered, well-designed systems create and drive improvement throughout an organization by ensuring that each team member understands the work and is granted permission to do that work. The kind of system required to support each team member can be classified into the three types of systems identified by the Shingo Institute: management systems, work systems, and the improvement system. The improvement system focuses across the entire organization and through all the departments within the organization. The improvement system consists of several sub-systems that impact all of the other systems in an organization. A management system provides direction to the leaders of work systems and the improvement system. The management system leaders ensure that the interrelationships between the work systems are properly developed and that the improvement system functions are adopted throughout the organization.
