Training Within Industry: Everything Old Is New Again

abril 03, 2022 Enviar um comentário

We Can Do It! Training inside Industry – or TWI for short – was a Us programme during World War II. It significantly improved industrial product and helped the Allies to win the war. While the ideas date to the 1940s, they are still very relevant. In my view, they are pure gold if you lot take to manage a shop floor. Information technology is to me the best overarching system for training and managing workers, and it significantly influenced Toyota.

While technology has inverse a lot since 1945, people have not. The methods of TWI still work, and tin really help you lot to amend. Fifty-fifty better, the original United states government documents from 1945 are all in public domain. Allow me introduce you to TWI. This is the get-go in a series of 5 posts on TWI.

History

TWI has it origins (very loosely) in World War I, when Charles R. Allen adult his four-point method of Preparation, Presentation, Application, and Testing to train shipyard workers. He published information technology in his book "The Instructor, the Man and the Job; a Paw Book for Instructors of Industrial and Vocational Subjects" (1919).

In preparation for joining the World State of war II, the The states established the TWI Services as part of the War Manpower Committee in the summer of 1940. The trouble was that the U.s. needed to rapidly increase its industrial output. After all, it was the main supplier of equipment to the allied forces Not bad United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, France, and even the Soviet Wedlock. At the same time, the industrial manpower was abroad fighting the state of war. Initially, the TWI Services was planned only for a short time, and the manpower was mostly borrowed from manufacture for a symbolic $1 per yr (the "Dollar a Year" men).

Women stepped upwardly to provide the labor, simply they had no experience in industrial piece of work like welding, milling, and drilling. Hence, TWI adult the chief four modules based on Allen:

JI: Job Instructions: Teach supervisors and experienced workers on how to train new workers.
JR: Job Relations: Teach supervisors on how to deal with workers and possible conflicts, using facts, with the goal to find the all-time solution for everyone involved.
JM: Job Methods: Teach how how workers tin improve their piece of work.
Program Development: Overarching grade on how to spot, analyze, and improve product problems.

There are a few more than modules in existence, by and large adult after the war by successor institutions of TWI. These are Spousal relationship Job Relations; JS: Job Safety; PS: Problem Solving; DL: Discussion Leading; and Chore Economic Training. Out of these, Chore Safety is the most successful ane.

In any instance, these 4 main modules of TWI were a not bad success, with over 1.7 million people trained. TWI was an crucial tool in stepping up industrial output for the state of war.

However, later the war ended, nigh of the men came back, took their old jobs, and the women went dorsum to their kitchens. The TWI Services was close downwardly by the US government on September 28, 1945. With this, the TWI effort became much smaller. From the xvi,551 plants that had people trained, a few hundred pledged money to continue the programme live. TWI conferences were held until 1952 (and since restarted again). The key people of TWI founded the TWI Foundation and the TWI Inc, but without the regime backing it had much less influence in the United states of america. They were, however, more than successful away, especially in Nippon. TWI significantly influenced Toyota, and old TWI manuals popped upward as training materials at Toyota when they established their NUMMI joint venture with GM in the U.s..

The graph below shows the mentioning of TWI in books during the last century. The war top between 1940 and 1945 is conspicuously visible, afterward that there is a gradual decline to the nowadays.

Out of the programs, Job Instructions was the well-nigh pop one with effectually one one thousand thousand people certified. Job Relations came 2nd with 490,000 certifications, followed by Job Methods with 244,000. Wedlock Task Relations had only 8,800, and Programme Evolution only 1,800.

Why TWI?

Nowadays, TWI is often known in industry, merely lacks … well … sexual practice appeal. Management'due south focus usually goes to more glitzy and modernistic (looking) programs.

But this misses out on a not bad programme. TWI managed to boil its methods down to a few key points for each of the modules, which they printed on small cards the size of a playing carte du jour. Hence, information technology is non a complicated method, but rather straightforward.

TWI considers five important skills that every supervisor should have, or what they call the 5 needs of a supervisor. These are all improved past using them in practice, simply a theoretical training can requite a head start. These 5 skills are also usually the starting signal for each of the unlike modules.

Knowledge of the Work: This may chronicle to machines, tools, materials, operations, processes, or technical skills.
Knowledge of Responsibilities: This may be policies, regulations, interdepartmental relationships, agreements, rules, schedules, and – very important – safe rules.
Skill in Improving Methods: To utilize machines, manpower, and material more effectively. Present we would say to reduce waste (muda).
Skill in Instructing: To have a well-trained and effective workforce.
Skill in Leading: Improve your ability to piece of work with people to get the virtually out of the people yous accept.

Three of the modules directly address one skill each. Job Methods is virtually improving methods. Job Instructions is almost instructing. And Job Relations is all most leadership. TWI assumes that the knowledge of work and responsibilities is taught by the workplace, as it is difficult to generalize these topics.

Some Limitations

The TWI approach is very skillful at what it does, merely its focus is on teaching and leading the worker as well every bit helping him to improve his job. It is not then much focused on the bigger picture of management. But if you use it for what it is intended to do, information technology works well.

The Job Instructions program is in my view nonetheless very good and very useful for training most working tasks. The Job Relations is also pretty solid and proficient textile, although information technology has potential to include more improvement into the daily leadership tasks. Job Methods has, in my view, the most shortcomings, as it involves the workers very footling, both for idea generation and implementation. It could also use some touch on-ups to embed the improvements as part of the bigger picture of the institute goals. The original TWI people really wanted to exercise this, but direction decided that it was good plenty. This is as well the program that got the most updates after 1945.

In the next few posts I will go through the primary modules in more than particular. I try to summarize these modules, but nearly of the text comes directly from the original documents of the War Manpower Commission. Over again, these documents are notwithstanding extremely useful for managing (on) a shop floor. Stay tuned, and leave and organize your industry!

P.S.: Many thanks to TWI Guru Marker Warren for checking the text.