TWI is a dynamic program that uses hands-on learning and practice to educate supervisors and leaders of all industries. It teaches lean manufacturing and frontline skills that are essential for success. TWI provides the missing link for lean manufacturing and Kaizen, the foundation of the Toyota production system. The essential skills include: job improvement, method improvement and leadership.
These skills are taught in an easy to learn format in a ”learn by doing” environment. The program is taught in two, five hour sessions by SCMEP TWI Institute Certified instructors that use proven TWI methodology.The program consists of Job Relations (JR), how to build and maintain positive employee relations. Followed by Job Instruction (JI), how to quickly train your employees to work correctly and safely, resulting in less scrap and rework, fewer accidents and less equipment damage. And finally, Job Methods (JM), where supervisors will learn how to improve the way in which their jobs are done, resulting in a greater amount of services and goods in less time. TWI shows leaders how to identify opportunity in their jobs, propose new ideas and put them into practice. TWI provides an immediate return on investment in workforce training.
TWI allows manufacturers to quickly and effectively tackle situations where the status quo is no longer acceptable and:
- There is a prevailing attitude of “because that’s the way we’ve always done it”
- Change is resisted; old habits prevail & there is a lot of tribal knowledge
- Associates are not involved
- Improvements only happened during Kaizen events and gains are not sustained
- The roles of front line supervisors and shop floor team leaders are changing or need to change
- Standard Work is not standardized
History - Training Within Industry
TWI was introduced in Japan during post-war rebuilding. It is still in widespread use in Japan and most notably, in Toyota as part of the Toyota Production System (TPS). It is foundational to Toyota's success in continuous improvement, and more importantly, in its ability to sustain those improvements.
In his book The Toyota Way, Jeffrey Liker tells us that “The Toyota Way of going to the source, observing in detail, and learning by doing were all very much influenced by TWI and became the backbone of Toyota’s standardization philosophy” and that “standardized work should be a cooperative effort between the foreman and the worker.” In support of this role of a supervisor, TWI training is the training of choice for “Strict adherence to standardized operations for new employee training and review of parts of the training system to enable quick learning of TPS.”
Toyota embraced TWI in 1951, trained their people as the Toyota Production System was developed fully in the 1960’s and is used to this day because TWI:
- Indoctrinates people into an “improvement” frame of mind
- Teaches people how to identify opportunities for improving their jobs
- Trains people how to generate ideas to take advantage of these opportunities
- Shows people how to get these ideas into practice right away
- Creates ownership for people to maintain standard work
In today’s successful lean environments, supervisors and team leaders spend the majority of their time dealing with people and process issues at the job level to in order to sustain the gains delivered by implementing lean. This is achieved by addressing daily performance problems, motivating people, encouraging cooperation, settling disputes and promoting planned change.
TWI has helped companies sustain the gains from their lean initiatives to create a true continuous improvement culture. The TWI program provides supervisors and team leaders with essential skills that allows them to accept responsibility for improvement, communicate effectively, develop teams to involve their people, delegate responsibility and train others. In turn production associates will accept responsibility for their work, participate in the improvement process, learn how to interact as part of a team and experience increased levels of job satisfaction.
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