The Shigeo Shingo
Framework
Poka-Yoke & Single-Minute Exchange
Shigeo Shingo represents one of the most distinctive thinking patterns in their field. Shigeo Shingo's approach, captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask.
The poka-yoke & single-minute exchange framework distils Shigeo Shingo's documented approach into a .md skill file you can load into Claude, ChatGPT, or any LLM in seconds.
Where most AI personas generate generic output, this framework is grounded in real documented work: interviews, writing, published frameworks, and the specific decisions Shigeo Shingo made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with Shigeo Shingo's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.
A glimpse of Shigeo Shingo's thinking.
Shingo believed that errors are inevitable but defects are not, and that the gap between an error and a defect is exactly where good system design lives. He rejected the idea that quality could be inspected into a product after the fact, insisting instead that the process itself must make incorrect actions either impossible or immediately visible. Every minute spent waiting for a die change, every unit scrapped because a worker misread a dial, is evidence not of human failure but of engineering failure.
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Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples, unlocked with purchase.
Where exactly in this sequence does the error occur, and is our detection point upstream or downstream of that moment?
4 more questions in Shigeo Shingo's voice are unlocked with purchase.
Full list of anti-patterns unlocked with purchase.
The full framework adds: detailed explanations of all five mental models with real-world examples, the decision heuristics Shigeo Shingo actually used, remaining signature questions, the complete list of anti-patterns, a copy-paste activation prompt, and a worked example.
Unlocked the moment you purchase. ~2,000 words total. Delivered as a Claude Skill and plain .md within 60 seconds of checkout.
- ✦Core philosophy: 2–3 sentences grounded in Shigeo Shingo's documented worldview
- ✦Five signature mental models: each named, with concrete examples from their work
- ✦Decision heuristics: the concrete rules they actually used
- ✦Signature questions: five questions that sound like Shigeo Shingo, not a generic MBA
- ✦What they would NOT do: the anti-patterns this framework rejects
- ✦Copy-paste activation prompt: drop straight into Claude or ChatGPT
- ✦Worked example: the framework applied to a realistic scenario
- →shigeo-shingo.zip: a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to
~/.claude/skills/ - →shigeo-shingo-framework.md: plain markdown. Works in ChatGPT Custom GPTs, Gemini, Claude Projects, agent system prompts, anywhere
What it does with a real question.
A founder is deciding whether to take a large but difficult client.
Don't decide on the client; decide on the failure modes. "Difficult" is a description of consequences, and you haven't yet located the errors that produce them. A large, difficult client usually generates trouble in a few predictable places: scope that drifts, approvals that arrive late, requirements that change after work has started, invoices that get disputed. Each one is an error, and the question is whether your system turns that error into a defect, meaning a missed deadline, an unpaid invoice, a burned team, or whether it stops the error at the source.
So my position is conditional, and the condition is structural. Take the client only if you can build the guardrails into the contract and the workflow before the first deliverable ships. A written scope with a change-order trigger that halts work until signed. Milestone payments tied to completed stages. A single named approver with a fixed turnaround window. Those are devices that make the wrong behavior impossible, not reminders asking everyone to be disciplined. If the client refuses these, you've learned the real price: you would be absorbing their variability with your own people's goodwill, and goodwill is not a control mechanism.
Next move: this week, list the five ways your last difficult engagement went wrong, mark the exact moment each error was committed, and draft a contract clause or process gate for each. Send that draft to the client before you say yes. Their reaction is your answer.
The full framework carries five models, decision heuristics, signature questions and a worked example.
Written by claude-sonnet-5-5 with this framework loaded, 2026-10-11. Checked automatically for length and for copied framework text.
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Inspired by the documented thinking of Shigeo Shingo. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.