Shigeo Shingo, born in Saga City, Japan, was a Japanese industrial engineer who distinguished himself as one of the world's leading experts on manufacturing practises and the Toyota Production System. Shingo is known far more in the West than in Japan, as a result of his meeting Norman Bodek, an American entrepreneur and founder of Productivity Inc in the USA. In 1981 Bodek had travelled to Japan to learn about the Toyota Production System, and came across books by Shingo, who as an external consultant had been teaching Industrial Engineering courses at Toyota since 1955. Shingo had written his Study of The Toyota Production System in Japanese and had it translated, very poorly, into English in 1980. Bodek took as many copies of this book as he could to the USA and arranged to translate Shingo's other books into English, eventually having his original study re-translated. Bodek also brought Shingo to lecture in the USA and developed one of the first Western lean manufacturing consultancy practises with Shingo's support.