Rosie the riveter invented Lean???

 I was asked by a client recently ‘what do you know about Training Within Industry (TWI)?’ Some of their other divisions had implemented TWI, and they were wondering if it could help them, but didn’t quite understand what TWI was all about. I had to admit at the time that I wasn't an expert on TWI, but… what I’ve learned since has me excited about what Rosie the riveter can teach today’s modern, high tech manufacturers.

TWI 101

TWI was introduced during WWII to help American manufacturers meet increased production demands for the war. Manufacturers were faced with the challenge of dramatically increasing production at a time when many of their employees were being conscripted, and new employees without previous factory experience (i.e. Rosie) were entering the workforce. It was apparent that the shortage of trained and skilled personnel at precisely the time they were needed most presented an obstacle to manufacturers, and that only improved methods of job training would address the shortfall.

The focus of TWI is training supervisors (TWI defines a supervisor as anyone who directs the work of others) to more effectively train the people working for them.

TWI consists of three main training modules, all of which follow a process similar to Deming’s PDCA:

1. Job Instruction (JI) – Trains supervisors to more effectively train workers to do a job correctly, consistently, and safely. JI gets inexperienced workers up to speed faster.
2. Job Methods (JM) – Trains supervisors how to improve work processes to improve quality and productivity.
3. Job Relations (JR) – Trains supervisors to prevent problems and deal with them when they do come up. JR teaches supervisors to deal with workers effectively and fairly, emphasizing the lesson, "People Must Be Treated As Individuals".

Did it work?

TWI has been cited as a major factor in helping America win WWII. By the end of WWII, over 1.6 million workers in over 16,500 plants had received training. In one study of 600 manufacturers from 1941 – 1945:

• Production increased an average of 86%
• Training time was reduced by 50%
• Labor hours reduced by 88%
• Scrap reduced by 55%
• Grievances reduced by 50%

What happened to TWI?

In spite of proven success, TWI was seen as a war effort, and was largely forgotten in the US when the war ended. American industry faced little serious competition after the war. With no competition, few saw the need to continue to improve. Also, after the war, the "old" workforce, returning from War, moved back to their previous jobs, without any idea of the "new culture", while most of the TWI trained people went back to their previous lives; this caused TWI culture to "fade away" almost instantaneously.

However, TWI was introduced in Japan during reconstruction, and became the foundation of the Toyota Production System and what we call Lean today.

• Job Instruction became the basis for sustaining Standardized Work, and is taught within Toyota virtually unchanged to this day. JI is considered fundamental within Toyota, critical to all other training.
• Job Methods laid the foundation for Kaizen, Quick Changeover (SMED), and Standardized Work
• Job Relations became the basis for much of the more practical aspects of Lean Culture.

Why should I care?

Well, if you’re cynical, complacent, or otherwise looking for an excuse not to move your company forward, you shouldn’t. But, if you’re frustrated trying to find and keep good, qualified employees even in this ‘down’ economy, read on.

If you accept the success TWI had when it was first introduced; if you acknowledge the success Toyota and other ‘Lean’ companies have had and recognize that much of it evolved from TWI; if you’ve tried Lean but wish there was a more American version, you might want to check out TWI.

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of ‘training programs’.  I’ve seen too much training done for the sake of training, and prefer ‘learning while doing’. That being said, I find the straightforward, results oriented methods used in TWI to be very effective, and believe the purpose and methods of TWI are just as relevant to unleashing the potential of today’s manufacturers as they were ‘back in the day’.

Waste is Easy to Get Rid of... If You Can See It.

It seems that all of the lessons in my life come with a degree of pain and / or frustration. This is the story of one painful lesson.

One of the axioms of Lean is that waste is easy to get rid of, but hard to see. I see this play out every time I tour a manufacturing plant for the first time. To me, signs of waste are everywhere; guys searching all over the plant for a tool, stacks of WIP inventory in every aisle, in boxes full of orders waiting to be processed. In even the most prosperous, successful businesses, through my eyes, waste is more prevalent than Bear's fans tears (all the Bear's fans just stopped reading... sorry, I couldn't help myself), more annoying than mosquitoes in a Wisconsin Summer... which brings me back to my personal and painful lesson.

On a hot and muggy Friday afternoon last Summer, I was in the midst of my typical scramble to get ready to get out of town for a long weekend (up Nort', eh). A sudden surge of inspiration (or too much sun) compelled me to stop ignoring the broken tailgate on my old Jeep, and fix it, thus making it easier to load all my junk.

Since the gate was stuck closed, the first challenge was getting access to the lock mechanism, so I could see, and fix, the problem (read waste). A couple of short 2x4's wedged between the lift gate and the interior trim, and whollaa, I could (sort of) see what was going on. Now, allow me to state the obvious, I am not a professional mechanic, nor do I play one on TV. I do generally manage to fix more than I break in the process, but it usually ain't pretty. So, while a professional mechanic would have information available as to what the latch mechanism looks like, and the experience to know what is likely to be wrong, and the proper tools to fix it, I had only my trusty 2x4's, a flashlight, and an assortment of pliers, crowbars, and bent screw drivers to perform surgery on my trusty Jeep. As you may have predicted, this is one case where I did break more than I fixed, and finally gave up 2 hours later (everything takes longer than it does), with only bloody knuckles and a sour disposition to show for my efforts. The moral of this story: if I could have seen the problem (waste), I would have been better equipped to fix it.

Alas, I was not yet done with my pre-upNort' scramble. Next up, the broken leaf spring on my boat trailer. This task was proceeding much better than the Jeep, solely because I could see the problem. The scowl was fading from my expression, and the kids were no longer huddled in the far corner of the house, wondering if Dad was about to have a conniption. Within a few minutes, the trailer was on jack stands, the leaf spring bolts were loosened, the spring removed, and the new spring installed. It sure makes a job easier when you can see what's going on. Great, just lower the trailer back on the ground, and... @%^&$, the new spring is just a fraction of an inch longer than the old one, not enough to even see while installing it, but enough to push the shackle backwards and up on the frame rail, essentially rendering my new spring into a rigid part of the frame, which, as I recall from ME302, is not the intended function of a leaf spring. Even when I thought I could see the problem, I didn't have the experience to come up with a 100% workable solution.

Unfortunately, Wisconsin motor vehicle laws prevent me from telling the rest of the story, but, I did complete another painful and frustrating life lesson.

So, what might you learn from my pain? 

• Waste is easy to get rid of, but hard to see 
• Waste is easy to get rid of... when you can see it. 
• Waste is nearly impossible to get rid of when you can't see it, or don't know what you're looking for. 
• Even when you think you are seeing the waste, you may be missing something that prevents you from reaching a good solution. 

So, will I hire a mechanic next time? My family hopes so.

Keeping Score: Motivate behaviors to get the right things done

Originally published in 'Insight for Manufacturing', June 2009

My son Trevor’s coach-pitch baseball league is about to embark on a radical change of policy. One that Trevor has not experienced in his brief but broad ranging career in youth sports. The radical change is… (are you sitting down?)… they are going to keep score! Wait just a minute. Isn’t the golden rule of modern early childhood sports ‘we don’t keep score. We just want the kids to have fun’? Have our league officials possibly considered what irreversible damage this could do to these fragile young egos? Have they considered what evils of cutthroat completion could be released? Or… have they finally accepted the reality that the kids, and the parents to be honest, are already keeping score, so we might as well acknowledge reality.

What a ridiculous PC concept not keeping score is. The kids, the parents, all of us are wired to want to know what the score is. Could you imagine watching a professional baseball game without a scoreboard? No one would watch. Some of us are so into keeping score we even keep our own scorebooks in our seats. How would the players and Manager act if no one knew the score? Take it a step further. What if the players not only didn’t know the score, but didn’t even know if what they were doing affected the score? What if the batter thought his job was to never get beaned, so he stands 10 feet away from the plate? What if the Center Fielder ran back and forth across the outfield, just trying to look busy?


Ridiculous? I’ve seen more than a few companies run this way. No one is keeping score. Or, only the owner can see the scoreboard, because it’s believed to be too complicated for the employees to understand, or someone would use the information against us if they knew the score. People are trying to look busy because they don’t understand how their role adds value to the organization and don’t have clear goals. People are just staying out of the way, hoping not to get beaned. If it’s so ridiculous to think a baseball team could succeed without knowing the score, why do we think our companies can succeed this way? Why would we expect people come to work every day and ‘do their jobs’ without knowing if their job made any difference to the score?


So, if it makes sense that players on the field need to know the score in order to give their best performance and put on a good game for the fans, wouldn’t it also make sense that the people we work with need to know the score in order to do their best work and add the most value to our customers? If this doesn’t make sense to you, maybe you can help me understand why Little Leaguers shouldn’t keep score. But if it does make sense, you might use the baseball / business analogies to help you put together a scoreboard.

Baseball / Business Analogies
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Baseball Example	Business Analogy	Possible Fixes
No scoreboard	No measures are in place; only the owners know if we (think) we made money at the end of the year	Develop four or five simple overall company measures that anyone in your company can understand if explained properly
Scoreboard only shows hits and errors	Measures don’t show the full picture, and show things customers don’t cares about; i.e. efficiencies, utilization	Be sure your measures reflect what your customers value; i.e. on-time delivery, lead-time, quote turnaround time, quality
Scoreboard is two innings behind	It takes three weeks to report last months numbers, making it too late to make any adjustments for this month, or to find the root cause of issues	Publish your measures on a timely, consistent basis. If you’re having troubledoing this, your measures may be too complicated
The players can’t see the scoreboard	The people doing the work which adds value to the customer can only guess how they are doing; their only feedback is to get yelled at for not doing the right things	Post your company measures where everyone can see. Regularly explain what the measures mean. Show people how what they do matters by developing Key Performance Indicators for each work area that support the overall company measures.

So, it sounds simple to put together a scoreboard, right? Yes. Should be easy, right? No, not by the experience of most companies I’ve worked with in establishing these types of measures. I’ve seen companies take months to establish basic overall company measures, and others give up out of frustration before ever establishing them. Other companies have established measures but never actually used them effectively. Here are some pointers to help along the way.

• Don’t try this alone. Ask your customers what they value, and how they measure you. Ask other companies what they measure. Ask the people you work with to help develop measures. The more people in your company who are involved in developing the measures, the more buy-in you’ll have. It might also help to have someone with an outside perspective to facilitate this process (in baseball they call them umpires).
• Start at the beginning. Avoid the tendency to rush to establish Key Performance Indicators for work areas before defining your overall company measures.
• Know what you’re measuring. Make sure everyone is on the same page by explicitly defining what you are measuring, how it will be measured, who will measure it, and how it will be displayed. This is tough work. Don’t short cut it.
• Communicate and educate. Remember that when you are finally ready to display your first measures, your audience will be starting at the same point you started; confused. Take time to explain and educate. Then keep educating. The average person needs to hear something seven times before it sticks. Answer the unspoken question of ‘what’s in it for me?’

If you take the time to establish meaningful, relevant, well understood measures, you’ll be amazed by the results. People who know the score are highly motivated to do the right things to win the game. By the way, my son’s baseball team won their first game 15-8. So far as I can tell, no fragile young egos were harmed in the process.

It's All About the Customer

Most small manufacturer's today are still struggling to get their sales back to pre-recession levels. Many are serving customers who have reduced their support staffs, leading to less planning by the customer and more rush orders for suppliers.  Further, many small manufacturers have reduced their own staffs, making it more challenging to serve their customers. And so on, and so on. Things are tough all over, right? Right. So what?!

The 'so what' is, our current business reality creates a tremendous opportunity for those companies who choose to differentiate themselves by improving their customer facing processes.

Ralph Keller's IndustryWeek article, 'Continuous Improvement: It's All About the Customer', makes an excellent case for why you shouold focus your Continuous Improvement initiatives to solve your customer's problems.  If  you're looking to increase sales, you might start by asking, 'how can I solve my customer's problems?'

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