The last few weeks for me have been all things Shingo, including a presentation at the Shingo Institute’s International Conference three weeks ago in Provo, Utah, followed by four days of Shingo Institute workshops at Vibco in Richmond, RI. Questions at both events about assessing for enterprise excellence caused me to reflect on a basic framework that Shigeo Shingo used to explain the progression of what we refer to today as “lean maturity.”

The P-D ratio was Shingo’s comparison of the time required to produce a product to the time given by the customer to deliver the product.

 …