Shingo Prize is a annual industry award recognizing excellence in Manufacturing. Organized by Shingo Institute, Utah State University, it covers the Global region. Established in 1988.
The Shingo Prize is the flagship recognition of the Shingo Institute at Utah State University's Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, established in 1988 in honor of Shigeo Shingo, the Japanese industrial engineer whose thinking shaped the Toyota Production System. Rather than a form-based awards program, organizations "challenge" for the Prize: they submit a detailed achievement report and, if it clears assessment, host a team of trained Shingo examiners for a three-to-four-day site visit. Examiners score culture and behavior at every level of the operation against the Shingo Model on a 1,000-point scale — how principles are actually lived on the floor, not just which lean tools are deployed.
There are three levels: the Shingo Bronze Medallion (575–674 points), the Silver Medallion (675–774) and the Shingo Prize itself (775+), which the Institute positions as a globally recognized symbol of a mature culture of organizational excellence. BusinessWeek dubbed it the "Nobel Prize of manufacturing" in 2000, and a 2008 criteria overhaul that shifted weight from tools to sustained cultural transformation sharply cut the number of annual recipients — a scarcity that makes the award unusually credible on a plant's or company's record. Recipients now come from around the world, with most recent winners based outside the United States.
Applications are accepted year-round through an 11-step process, and challengers must complete submissions at least six weeks before the Shingo Conference at which they want to be recognized; the full cycle typically spans several months. Challenge fees are published in the Institute's Challenge Guidelines rather than on the website, so budget for both the application and hosting a multi-day examiner visit. Strong challengers show years of sustained, measurable results and principle-driven behavior at operator level — the Institute recommends its DISCOVER EXCELLENCE workshop before applying, and many sites first target Bronze or Silver as staging posts.