Training Within Industry

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Training Within Industry ( TWI ) was a program launched by the United States Department of War and was part of the War Manpower Commission from 1940 to 1950 . The purpose of the program was to advise war-essential industries whose employees had been drafted into the US Army , while the War Department ordered additional armaments. It was evident that the shortage of trained and skilled workers at a time when they were desperately needed would put these industries in dire straits, and that only improved training methods could make up for this deficit. By the end of World War II , over 1.6 million workers in over 16,500 plants had received certification. The program continued after the war in Europe and Asia, where it supported reconstruction. It is particularly respected in the business world, where it stimulated the development of the Japanese concept of kaizen .

Overview

The four basic training courses (ten-hour sessions) were developed by experts from the private sector who had been assigned on loan. Due to the tense situation, numerous experimental methods were tested and discarded. This resulted in a set of condensed, focused training programs. Each program had introductory elements (appreciation sessions), the aim of which was to “sell” the programs to top management and introduce the programs to middle management. Each program also contained "train-the-trainer" programs and implementation guides for the master trainers.

The TWI trainers had to be invited to a company to present their material. To market the program, they developed the “five supervisor needs”: every supervisor needs knowledge of work, knowledge of responsibility, ability to teach, ability to improve, and ability to lead. While knowledge of work was an issue for professional training and knowledge of responsibility was an issue for companies, TWI focused on teaching, improvement and leadership skills. Each program was based on Charles Allen's four-step method (preparation, presentation, application and review).

Available ten hour sessions:

  • Job Instruction (JI): a course that instructs trainers (supervisors and experienced workers) to train inexperienced workers faster. The trainers learned to break down activities into precisely defined individual steps, to show the processes and to explain the key points and the reasons for them, to watch the instructed as they attempted it themselves under supervision and they gradually did it without supervision to get done. The course was based on the belief: “If the worker has not learned, the trainer has not taught.” At the request of companies outside of production, variations of job instruction training for hospitals, office areas and farms have been developed.
  • Job Methods (JM) - improvement methodology: a course that instructs supervisors to objectively evaluate the efficiency of the activities in their area of ​​responsibility, to assess them methodically and to suggest improvements. The course also worked with an activity breakdown, but participants learned to analyze each step and see if there was sufficient reason to continue doing it by asking a series of targeted questions. If they found that a step should be eliminated, combined, rearranged or simplified, they were asked to develop and apply new methods by selling them to the "boss" and their colleagues. It was necessary to win their approval with regard to safety, quality, quantity and costs. The new method was then standardized and the contributions of those involved were recognized.
  • Job Relations (JR): a course that taught managers how to deal effectively and fairly with employees. It was based on the belief that "people must be treated as individuals".
  • Program Development (PD): This meta-course taught those responsible for training how to support management in solving production problems through training. In contrast to the job training sessions, each with two-hour sessions on five consecutive days, PD comprised five full days within two weeks.

There was also a short-term course to train union representatives to work effectively with management staff (Union Job Relations).

Additional programs

Internal Training Programs: "Management Contact Manual" (1944) - formal training to sell TWI programs to corporate executives; “How to get Continuing Results from TWI Programs in a Plant” (1944) - this training was the result of two years of experimentation and the experience that is required to successfully introduce and implement TWI.

  • Job Safety (JS): While the US TWI service decided not to develop a JS program (on the grounds that safety was part of every job), Canada worked out the first variant, which closely followed the JI program leaned on. This program was offered to England, but they declined and developed a JS program itself, which focused on the discovery of risks and their resolution. Copies of the British program circulated in Japan from 1948.
  • Problem Solving (PS): There were two different programs that used similar names. The TWI Foundation published its PS program in 1946 and followed the standard format of the job programs. TWI Inc. published its program in 1955 as a significantly larger one, which revolved around the use of the JI, JR and JM programs for problem solving.
  • Discussion Leading (DL): This was an early work in the development of what are known today as facilitation skills. TWIF also created a variant of this program known as conference leading.

Distribution in other states

There were several groups that had an influence on the worldwide distribution of the TWI program: US State Department , US Army , British Ministry of Labor , International Labor Organization (ILO) and Standard Oil . In 1944, the UK Department of Labor sent Frank Perkins to the United States to evaluate the TWI program. In the summer of 1944, Perkins returned to England to set up a similar program. The UK Department of Labor actively supported the TWI program. In addition to the United States and England, the program was known to be in use in 65 states in 1959. Its diffusion in Europe was spearheaded by Standard Oil, which promoted the effort to translate manuals into national languages. Some European TWI activities were carried out by Visiting Experts (VE) under the Marshall Plan , but with limited success. It was the later work of the ILO with the use of the Standard Oil translations and new translations that established the TWI program in Europe. Around 1947 the first Japanese were trained as part of the ILO-TWI training programs in Bangalore India .

Germany

The introduction into West Germany began in 1948, with the support of the newly formed Federal Ministry of Labor from 1950. During this time, the “Stuttgart Working Group TWI for the Promotion of In-House Labor Relations” was established. This working group was the administrator of the funds made available for the expansion of the TWI program. A conference report from 1953 exists from this working group. The association was deleted from the Frankfurt register of associations in 2003 (information from the Frankfurt Register Court on June 19, 2017), the files unfortunately destroyed ten years later in 2013.

TWI elements also flowed into the REFA work and the RKW. In addition, the West German master craftsman training was influenced by TWI. By 1953, 80,000 people in West Germany had taken part in job instruction training.

Similar to the reservations in the USA about the supposedly Japanese methods from the Toyota production system, TWI also had to struggle with reservations in Germany.

post war period

Although the government stopped funding the TWI program for use within the US in 1945, it funded its introduction to the war-torn nations of Europe and Asia. Several private groups continued to offer TWI in the US and abroad. Channing Dooley, Walter Dietz, Mike Kane and Bill Conover (collectively known as "the Four Horsemen") continued to develop the job programs by establishing the TWI Foundation. The group was responsible for the continued dissemination of TWI in Europe and Asia. The head of a regional office founded TWI Inc. and was commissioned by the US government to offer TWI training courses in Japan. TWI was particularly well received in Japan, where TWI formed the basis of the Kaizen culture in the industry. Kaizen , known in the West for terms such as quality circles , was successfully used by Toyota Motor Corporation in conjunction with Taiichi Ohno's Lean - or Just In Time principles. In the foreword to Dinero's book Training Within Industry, John Shook tells of a Toyota trainer who pulled out an old copy of a TWI manual to prove that American workers at NUMMI could be taught the “Japanese” methods that Toyota could use were used. Consequently, TWI was the forerunner of what is now considered a Japanese invention.

Follow-up until today

There are different speculations about the reasons why TWI disappeared so quickly in the USA. According to Donald A. Dinero, it is a complex ecosystem in which the elements interact in a similarly opaque way as is the case with natural ecosystems. TWI was later continued in some companies, but largely disappeared from the radar of public perception. Walter Dietz described his life's work in a small self-published book. The visibility and perception only changed around 2000/2001 when small and medium-sized enterprises were promoted by the CNYTDO (Central New York Technology Development Organization)

literature

German language or German translation

  • G. Schretzmayr (Ed.): The German TWI work: conference report. Stuttgarter Arbeitskreis-TWI eV, 1953.
  • WA Pfaehler: Training in industry. Doctoral thesis, ETH Zurich, 1959.
  • Jeffrey K. Liker, David P. Meier: Toyota Talent: Employees as a success factor - how to discover and promote the potential of your employees. 2nd Edition. Finanzbuch Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-89879-752-8 .
  • Götz Müller: TWI: Training Within Industry - Instruct, lead, improve. Carl Hanser Verlag, ISBN 978-3-446-45521-4 .

English speaking

  • Walter Dietz: Learning By Doing: The Story of Training Within Industry 1940-1970. 1970.
  • Donald A. Dinero: Training Within Industry: The Foundation of Lean. CRC Press, 2005, ISBN 1-56327-307-1 .
  • Patrick Graupp, Robert. J. Wrona: The TWI Workbook: Essential Skills for Supervisors. Productivity Press, 2006, ISBN 1-56327-315-2 .
  • Patrick Graupp, Robert. J. Wrona: Implementing TWI: Creating and Managing a Skill-based Culture. CRC Press, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4398-2596-9 .
  • Donald A. Dinero: TWI Case Studies: Standard Work, Continuous Improvement, and Teamwork. Productivity Press, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4398-4610-0 .
  • Patrick Graupp, G. Jakobsen, J. Vellema: Building a Global Learning Organization: Using TWI to Succeed with Strategic Workforce Expansion in the LEGO Group. CRC Press, 2014, ISBN 978-1-4822-1363-8 .
  • Patrick Graupp, Robert J. Wrona: Second Edition: The TWI Workbook: Essential Skills for Supervisors. CRC Press, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4987-0396-3 .
  • Donald A. Dinero: The TWI Facilitator's Guide: How to use the TWI Programs successfully. Routledge, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4987-5484-2 .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ibiblio.org
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Donald A. Dinero: Training Within Industry: The Foundation of Lean . Productivity Press, Portland, OR 2005, ISBN 1-56327-307-1 .
  3. ↑ (Reference: US National Archive SCAP collection)
  4. ↑ (Reference: US National Archive SCAP collection; US National Archive TWIF Collection)
  5. ↑ (Reference: US National Archives; British National Archives; ILO Archives Geneva)
  6. ↑ (Reference: British National Archives - Perkins Report - folder LAB 18-139)
  7. ↑ (Reference: British National Archive - folder LAB 18-724)
  8. ↑ (Reference: US National Archive SCAP collection - Japan; ILO Archives Geneva)
  9. ↑ TWI and Economy
  10. ↑ Conference report
  11. ^ Conference report, p. 49, p. 52.
  12. ↑ Conference report, p. 37.
  13. ↑ Conference report, p. 12.
  14. ↑ Objections to TWI and their refutation
  15. ↑ Donald A. Dinero: The TWI Facilitator's Guide: How to use the TWI Programs successfully . Routledge, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4987-5484-2 .
  16. ^ Walter Dietz: Learning By Doing: The Story of Training Within Industry 1940-1970 . 1970.
  17. ↑ Patrick Graupp: The TWI Workbook: Essential Skills for Supervisors . Productivity Press, 2006, ISBN 1-56327-315-2 .