Sylvain Landry, winner of the prestigious Shingo Publication Award
December 18, 2024
Professor Sylvain Landry has won the Shingo Publication Award for his book Bringing Scientific Thinking to Life: An Introduction to Toyota Kata for Next-Generation Business Leaders (and Those Who Would Like to Be).
This international award, which is conferred by the Shingo Institute at Utah State University, recognizes outstanding works that demonstrate a significant contribution to organizational excellence through thought leadership and practical application.
Published in 2022, the award-winning book deals with “kata” – a word borrowed from martial arts meaning “way of doing” and “practice routine” – an approach that is in fact a transferable model of the tacit managerial practices used in Toyota. For several key stakeholders in the field, including Mike Rother, author of Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness, and Superior Results, “Professor Landry’s book (…) has become the go-to publication for anyone who is curious about Toyota Kata and how practicing it helps develop scientific thinking in your team.”
About the winner
Sylvain Landry has taught at HEC Montréal for over 30 years. In addition to being a professor and Director of the Department of Logistics and Operations Management, he is Director of Continuous Improvement Consulting and Support. He is also Associate Director of the Health Care Management Hub at HEC Montréal.
He has a PhD in Administration from the School and a Master’s in Applied Sciences from Polytechnique Montréal. His areas of expertise include continuous improvement and Toyota Kata, healthcare logistics, and the deployment of strategies and integrated performance management systems.
In addition to having published numerous articles in scientific journals, he also published Lean, kata et système de gestion : réflexions, observations et récits d’organisations, with associate researcher Martin Beaulieu in 2016 (and republished in 2021). He won the HEC Montréal Research Impact Award in 2023, in collaboration with colleagues from his department.
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