TWI Summit 2007
June 14th, 2007 by HalHave you tried drinking from a fire hose? I did last week at the TWI Summit. It was the largest meeting of TWI proponents in over 50 years. Next year will be bigger. How do I know? They've reserved more rooms and moved to a larger venue at Disney World. But the real reason it will be bigger has to do with a happy accident. But before I share that I'll give you a taste of the summit. It started with a few answers to some tough questions.
Tough Questions — Real Answers, Don Dinero
Don is the author of the book Training within Industry: The Foundation of Lean. It's a well-researched description of TWI and why it has been so successful. It is so good, it won the 2006 Shingo Prize. It includes a bonus CD of the original TWI training documents. You can also find the TWI documents at SME Green Mountain Chapter TWI Docs. Don shared the questions he's often asked and his answers.
The basic question is "Does this (TWI) stuff work?" One of TWI's earliest challenges leading up to WWII was in teaching people to make industrial lenses. Prior to using the TWI Job Instruction (JI) approach to training, it took five years for someone to acquire the skills of a Master Lens Maker. That was reduced to five months using JI for training people. Following improvements to the TWI methods training was reduced to just five days.
"If the person hasn't learned, then the instructor hasn't taught."
The first question was followed by, "Will it work today?" The answer again is yes. According to Don and others, virtually all Japanese companies with operations in the US (and elsewhere) use the TWI programs to train their people. You might wonder how that came to be? General MacArthur gets the credit. He introduced TWI to Japan as part of the effort to rebuild industry. TWI was also introduced in Germany for the same reason.
There are numerous ways to learn about TWI. You can take a course as some of our clients, my staff and I are doing this week. You can also study the original documents. They are in the pubic domain (no copyrights). There is also the The TWI Workbook: Essential Skills for Supervisors, by master trainer Patrick Graupp and Bob Wrona published by the TWI Institute. But I suspect the way most people will learn about TWI is from the happy accident. Just prior to the TWI Summit, Jeffrey Liker and David Meier published their latest book, Toyota Talent. The authors's showcase how Toyota systematically makes learning part of the everyday fabric of their existence. It is built on TWI…just as it was introduced to Toyota in Japan in 1951.
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