Job Safety Training

The lack of safe working conditions is often one of the biggest hurdles companies have to overcome in improving their efficiency. And yet, it’s rare that one can see an organization putting the necessary attention into this until it’s too late. Taking up a preemptive approach, and dealing with job safety before it’s even become a problem, is one of the best ways to make sure your organization is run efficiently.

Focusing on safety also sends a strong message to your workers that you respect what they do. This will aid in future improvements, as they will realize that the improvement efforts are not just about saving money.

What Job Safety Training entails

While it’s often obvious what a company needs to do in order to comply with things like OSHA regulations, there are some subtler nuances to developing a rigid structure for training everyone and getting new employees up to speed.

Like everything else based on lean methodologies, Job Safety (JS) Training revolves around a constantly changing model. The organization must continuously evaluate the current state of their safety training, both with regards to past trends, as well as what employees are saying, and adapt that model accordingly.

Listening to feedback is critical here, as it concerns the safety of employees, and not just the productivity of the organization. Sometimes, it might seem like this feedback doesn’t make much sense in the context of the current situation. It’s common that low-level workers have a much better overview of some particular types of issues and hazards that can arise.

Tackling problems at the root

Once a potential issue has been discovered, it’s important to figure out where it comes from in the first place. Just because the organization manages to avoid a potential workplace injury once doesn’t mean that the problem should be swept under the rug.

It’s important to figure out what the root cause is as soon as possible, and deal with the problem from there. Otherwise, there’s no guarantee that the same problem isn’t going to come back later on.

Problems should be treated as showstoppers. In other words, as soon as something has been identified as an issue, it should block the execution of the general workflow until it’s been resolved. Sometimes this severely breaks the flow, and puts a halt on the company’s work for an extended period, but it’s much better than having an accident occur during a working day.

Training should apply to all ranks

Just because low-level workers might be the ones most prone to injury (due to the nature of their work), this doesn’t mean that higher-ups should be exempt from JS. It can actually be beneficial to get everyone on board in an equal capacity, as supervisors may be able to figure out where a problem is coming from better by utilizing their high-level overview of the company structure.

On that note, it’s also important to provide adequate training materials to all members of the organization. Sometimes it will also be appropriate to develop unique training sessions for those higher up in the chain of command, if their working conditions differ too much from those below them.

Once again, communication is key, and all feedback must be taken into consideration, no matter which level of the organization it originates from. If a worker is concerned with the way their superiors are being trained about safety, this should be taken into account.

Punishing or rewarding?

Deviations from the safety norms should be treated very seriously. How exactly the organization is going to address those problems depends on its own approach, and there are generally two ways to go about this.

The company can either punish those who stray away, or reward those who comply. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, but it’s generally better to take the more positive approach. Of course, depending on the circumstances, that might not be ideal. For example, when safety is absolutely critical, then the actions taken must be correspondingly severe.

Conclusion

One of the biggest mistakes an organization can make is to put off dealing with JS until it’s too late. The consequences can be severe. Considering how much trouble can be saved with just a little preventative action, it makes full sense to pay a great deal of attention to how employees are being taught to handle their safety.

And as with anything related to lean methodologies, the company’s safety training must be continuously improved, according to the data obtained in the process.

Learn more about TWI >>> 

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Job Methods Training

An important idea of Training Within Industry is called Job Methods (JM). The goal is to produce quality products in less time by making the best use of the people, machines, and materials currently available. Participants are taught how to break down jobs into detailed steps. Every detail is questioned in a systematic manner to generate ideas for improvement. Improvements lead to new methods, which are developed by eliminating, combining, rearranging, and simplifying steps in the process.

Every aspect of the workflow should be subject to constant analysis and evolution. Just because things have been done in a certain way for a long time doesn’t automatically mean that this way is ideal, and this is exactly what JM aims to address.

This type of training focuses on teaching everyone in the company from the high-level executives to the lower workers to constantly look for potential areas of improvement in their work, and to communicate those findings with everyone else.

Breaking down the job into pieces

As with any other technique applied in TWI, JM relies on breaking down a job into its discrete components and analyzing all of them separately. The goal here is to figure out if there is any element of the pipeline that can be obviously reworked or dealt away with completely.

It’s also important to look at the way pieces connect and interact with each other, and not just at each one individually. The bigger picture is just as critical, and proper JM should focus on teaching participants to analyze problems from both perspectives.

Sometimes a step is best simplified by breaking it down into further steps. Even if this requires a significant reworking of the company’s methodologies and/or instructions, it’s often still a good move when it comes to simplifying the workflow.

Look out for waste!

Waste is everywhere around us in the world of industry, and lean methodologies teach us that it should be eliminated as soon as it pops up. Waste can manifest itself in different ways when it comes to the specific tasks within a company’s workflow, but the important thing is that everyone involved in the JM process can spot areas that can be safely removed.

Often this will entail some serious discussion within the organization. This is where other parts of TWI can come into play, such as Job Relations (JR) Training. The whole system is tightly interconnected and it’s important to utilize all of its elements together for this reason.

Welcome criticism

Another important aspect of JM is that the company should be open to criticism with regards to the results produced in the training. Often, it will turn out that the employees receiving the training will have various comments about the current structure of the workflow.

Implementing JM properly means that this criticism should be taken into account, and that employees should be given a stable platform to voice their concerns in this regard.

A company’s workflow will never be perfect, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Having an open-minded approach to developing that workflow is what truly matters, and any business is going to take serious measures against anything that proves to be an important issue discovered through JM.

An ongoing process

It’s also important to realize that JM is something that should be done on an ongoing basis, not as a one-time experience. The best way to improve a company’s workflow is to analyze and change it continuously.

Of course, if those changes start coming in too fast, they may also interfere with the regular work of the organization’s employees. Determining the ideal frequency of JM sessions is another element of the training itself, as it boils down to analyzing the company’s own methodologies.

It’s also a good idea to limit the extent of control that different parts of the organization have over the JM process, at least in the beginning. That’s because some departments will be affected by the resulting changes more severely than others, and it’s important to avoid a conflict of interests in this case.

Discussing things between everyone in the company can lead to great results in this regard, and as long as everyone is on the same page before the training even starts, there should be no major conflicts along the way.

Conclusion

Applying JM regularly can help ensure that a company’s workflow remains lean and in accordance with the current market trends. Being open to criticism and listening to what employees have to say about the process is one of the best ways to ensure fast and uninterrupted progress.

Learn more about TWI >>> 

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What We Can Learn from the TWI Service

When the United States government implemented Training Within Industry, it was more of a way to address an immediate need, and ensure that the country could survive in a difficult situation. After the war, TWI slowly lost popularity, as companies were succeeding without it (due to a strong economy). Despite being an effective way to drive a company forward, many organizations have only recently started to pursue TWI.

So what exactly has TWI taught us, and how is it being applied nowadays to boost the productivity of companies around the world?

The philosophy has expanded quite a lot since its initial iteration, and it’s seen a lot of attention from some specific companies, such as Toyota and Kinetico.

Feedback should matter on all levels

One of the key concepts behind TWI is that everyone should be able to provide feedback about the current state of affairs, including the low-level workers at the frontline. In fact, because TWI was created specifically to handle a lack of fresh working hands, it’s particularly well tailored towards ensuring that new employees can be brought up to speed as quickly as possible.

This, as it turns out, TWI works best when those new employees are given a chance to voice their concerns in a systematic manner. It’s also important to be able to filter the legitimate concerns within this flow of information, which requires higher-level management to accomplish.

Training new employees should be done according to a rigid system

Standardizing processes is what lean manufacturing is all about, and TWI shares a lot with the core concepts in lean manufacturing. One of the key ideas behind TWI is that all new workers should undergo a standardized training course that presents the material to them in a standard way.

This not only ensures that everyone can get up to speed faster, but it also helps spot mistakes in the training itself. In addition, workers can more efficiently cooperate and assist each other while they’re learning, resulting in even more noticeable improvements of the training.

This doesn’t just apply to newcomers to the workforce, either. TWI can easily be scaled up and down, to ensure that workers across all levels are being given the appropriate skills that they need, in order to advance in their jobs.

In the past, companies typically wasted a lot of time on convoluted training processes, and the potential of new employees used to take much longer to bring them up to speed.

Thanks to the advance of TWI in the modern industry, that’s no longer has to be the case. We now understand the importance of ensuring that everyone can contribute to the process immediately. And as it turns out, an employee often doesn’t actually need that much in order to get started, and perform their basic duties correctly.

Roadblocks should be identified as early as possible

Sometimes, the training process of a company will be developed in a way that leads to unexpected roadblocks. These are often hard to predict early on, requiring a lot of careful analysis of the data coming in from training sessions.

TWI once again focuses on dealing with issues as early as possible, immediately after they’ve been identified. This means that a potential problem should be resolved urgently, instead of trying to work around it, hoping that it’s just a temporary hitch.

This is opposed to the traditional process that most companies used to follow, which put a lot of scrutiny on reports of potential problems with the training, and the eventual resolution takes too long.

We can still learn a lot about TWI. The modern iteration is still evolving, and we’re likely going to see it going through some serious changes over the next years, especially when technology gets added into the picture.

Conclusion

Even if a company does not immediately apply TWI to its own processes, it’s still important to dig within the philosophy and see what it has to offer. There is a lot we can learn from the way TWI works, and we’re barely scratching the surface of what’s possible right now.

Have you combined technology with TWI principles? Please share your results in the comments below…

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The Implications of TWI on Today’s Markets

It’s clear that Training Within Industry has had a huge impact on the way the manufacturing industry matured, and we will likely keep seeing those effects for a long time to come. And yet, in some cases it can be a bit tricky to pinpoint exactly what has changed as a result of TWI, and what we’ve learned about the way we should be structuring our working processes.

The truth is, TWI has actually had a much more profound impact than most people think, and the results are all around us. As companies learned to take up a leaner approach to the way they train their workers, these best practices made their way into the standard training processes of many companies.

It’s a world of experimentation

One of the most notable aspects of today’s market is the fact that businesses are much more open to experimentation and embracing failure. This is an important point to consider, as it’s becoming more and more clear that the lack of experimentation has been holding companies back significantly in the past.

Thanks to TWI, a company can ensure that it always has a constant flow of workers ready to take on the tasks associated with any level of its production. This means that different components of a manufacturing chain can be added and removed more easily, and the company is able to make decisions in a more independent way. It makes the company agile, which gives them a competitive advantage.

Getting appropriate worker feedback

Another important part of TWI is that it encourages workers to share their opinions about the way the company’s current structure works, and to relay their experiences with their specific tasks. While worker feedback is present in pretty much every organization, TWI treats it with particular importance, and not easily ignored.

The final result is that companies are able to develop production plans that much more closely match the expertise and working preferences of their employees. On the other hand, the standardized nature of the process for developing those plans means that they can be easily replicated and expanded to other parts of the organization.

Where is this all leading to?

It’s hard to predict exactly how TWI is going to impact companies in the near future.

This is becoming especially true today, when we have access to various tools that accelerate the production process. Harnessing the true potential of TWI is something every business owner should look into. It’s no wonder that many of the larger companies on the global market are paying more and more attention to the philosophy.

One of the aspects of TWI that is becoming particularly pronounced is the way that lower-level workers are able to shape the production process on a larger scale. TWI has taught us the importance of getting proper feedback from employees at all levels and treating it correctly, especially in an organization that sees rapid changes in its working process.

An efficient conflict resolution tool

Conflicts often arise in a complex organization, especially when worker feedback is being used to drive the process forward and improve it. TWI can help resolve those conflicts relatively easily, as it emphasizes a quick approach to the removal of any obstacles.

What this means in the specific case of a conflict is that TWI encourages the organization to take the approach that resolves the problem in the smallest possible number of steps. This is aligned with the general idea behind lean methodologies, and even though it may sometimes lead to valuable feedback being pushed back slightly, it ultimately helps the organization evolve.

Conclusion

We’re seeing some serious effects of TWI on the modern markets, and it’s very likely that those effects are going to become stronger as the concepts regain popularity.

Empowering workers to drive the process forward, as it turns out, can have a strong positive impact on the operations of a company. Learning to trim the fat from the constant stream of feedback is one of the most important skills associated with TWI.

What are your experiences with TWI?

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How Training Within Industry Helped Stabilize the Economy in a Time of Hardship

Wartime is always hard on all countries involved, no matter if they have the upper hand on the frontlines or not. We’ve seen some amazing feats throughout history. as companies have found different ways to handle their economic situations. One of the most interesting examples is that of the Training Within Industry (TWI) program in the United States during World War II.

The program not only helped keep the nation’s workforce skilled and motivated, but it also helped ensure that new knowledge was constantly being communicated into the people responsible for the critical aspects of manufacturing.

How did TWI impact the economy?

The problem faced by the government was a complicated one. As young men kept being drafted off to war, the nation was constantly depleted of valuable resources that were needed in manufacturing and other areas of the industry.

Failing to address this shortage would mean an eventual collapse of the internal production of the nation, which would ultimately doom it in the war as well. Thankfully, the government came up with a way to prevent this from happening. New workers were being trained in an accelerated manner, gaining the ability to enter the workforce at a much faster pace than what was normal until that point.

As a result, while other countries found themselves struggling to keep up with the constantly increasing demands of wartime, the United States managed to not only hold on, but the country even prospered and pushed forward.

The modern effects of TWI

And while the program was mostly abandoned shortly after the war was over (as it was not needed anymore), it had a major impact on the way some companies organized their workflow. That impact can still be felt today, and it can be argued that TWI principles are still impacting the economy quite strongly.

On a more direct level, TWI was adopted by various companies into their manufacturing processes, once their respective owners realized the huge potential of the program on getting their workforce up to speed.

One of the strong points of the program is that it can be applied on a smaller level very easily, and it doesn’t require any special handling to scale up or down as necessary. This has resulted in a widespread adoption of some of the main ideas behind TWI in various parts of the industry, and some companies still maintain the core principles behind the program.

Current examples of TWI

Toyota is a well-known example of a company using TWI in their own workflow, and they’ve managed to  see some very successful results thanks to the successful adoption of the philosophy. Toyota are also responsible for some additions to the main ideas of TWI which have managed to spread quickly, and it’s inspiring to follow the company’s progress through the market.

The way to the future

Modern communication methods have made it even easier to apply the principles of TWI to the workflow of any company, and it’s not rare to see results much more quickly than in the past now. The Internet and video streaming services can be an invaluable resource in getting workers up to speed even more efficiently and with less hassle.

It can also provide valuable feedback to those running the program, something which people didn’t really have access to in the past. By carefully observing what employees have to say about the way their training is being handled, it’s often not very hard to adapt TWI to the specific needs of one’s own company, and end up with a customized, highly efficient version of it.

After all, the modern version of TWI is firmly rooted in the same place as lean manufacturing philosophies, meaning that it’s highly adaptable to change by default. Even if a particular aspect of TWI doesn’t work well for the purposes of a specific company, this can be easily changed with some careful observation.

Because of this, its effects on the economy will likely keep getting more and more pronounced, especially with the recent resurgence in the last decade.

Conclusion

It’s not hard to see how TWI has impacted the economy of not just the United States, but the modern world as a whole. The program is highly efficient when applied correctly. The way different companies have evolved it and pushed it forward means that we’re probably going to see even better results in the long run.

It’s exciting to think about the ways TWI can help us be more productive in the future, but it’s even more exciting to hop on board of the trend right now, and see what it has to offer.

Learn more about the 4 methods of TWI >>>

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An Overview of TWI

Training Within Industry is a program originally developed to service the needs of the United States government in a climate of rapid change and constantly increasing demands during the war. The system was lean and tightly structured, and it produced some amazing results, which makes it a bit unusual that we seem to have forgotten all about it nowadays.

The truth is, TWI is still all around us, just in different forms. Its core philosophies have still managed to find their way inside the industry, and various companies have started to rediscover the huge benefits attached to following TWI.

What is TWI all about?

There are some different implementations of TWI around us, and depending on who you ask, you might get slightly different results. But in the end, there are some principles that are common across all interpretations.

A common theme in most iterations of TWI is the 4-step method, which boils down to these important steps:

• Job Instruction (JI) training – How to teach a person to do a job correctly, safely, and conscientiously

It’s important that a standardized system is developed for introducing new employees to the job. Job instruction training revolves around providing the supervisors in the company with an adequate set of tools that can help them get everyone up to speed as quickly as possible.

This stage often involves gathering a lot of feedback from the new employees being trained, as well as the supervisors themselves. It’s one of the critical steps in ensuring a smooth workflow in an organization with a large turnover rate.

Learn more about JI >>>

• Job Methods (JM) Training – How to analyze jobs to make the best use of the people, machines, and materials currently available

Improving the working methodologies of the company is everyone’s task, and supervisors should be trained in this more than anyone else. It falls largely on their shoulders to ensure that the methods employed by the company are in line with current market trends, as well as that they make sense when one looks at the big picture.

Learn more about JM >>>

• Job Relations (JR) Training – How to build positive employee relations, increase cooperation and motivation, and effectively resolve and prevent people problems

Job relations used to take a backseat in the way companies were ran in the past, but this is changing fast. It’s becoming much more important for organizations to realize the importance of resolving workplace conflicts easily and efficiently, which is why job relations training should be an integral part of any company’s educational process.

Learn more about JR >>>

• Job Safety (JS) Training – How to identify the direct and indirect causes of incidents and injuries and prevent them from happening

Safety training is one of the areas that companies traditionally pay very little attention to, until the actual need arises (usually after the fact). Job safety is critical in ensuring that the company can recover from faults quickly, and that it can operate efficiently, even when someone isn’t following the rules as accurately as they should be. If done properly, job safety training can prevent accidents and harm.

Learn more about JS >>>

Standardizing the process

A critical point in applying TWI correctly is ensuring that all processes involved in the workflow are standardized, and that the company is constantly evaluated according to those standards. This can sometimes lead to a temporary reduction in productivity, as the new requirements are being implemented, but it will ultimately help make the process a lot smoother and more trouble-free.

Standardization can also help reduce errors in the workflow. When it’s known exactly how the output of any given step of the process must look like, it becomes much easier to spot problems and to identify their root cause.

Eliminating waste

Like any lean philosophy, TWI is strongly concerned with eliminating waste from the workflow, and ensuring that all efforts invested into the work are put towards a productive end. This once again comes down mainly to listening to the opinions of low-level workers and implementing their feedback appropriately.

This works because those workers will often have the ability to spot issues with the way the workflow of the company is structured better than anyone else, and they should be recognized as the eyes and ears of upper-level management.

This is precisely where some modern organizational structures tend to fail, and why TWI is gaining so much popularity in modern times, despite being a relatively old concept.

A classic with a new coat of paint

The reason TWI has been able to shine again today probably has to do with the proper development of lean methodologies and their advance into modern manufacturing principles. There are certain elements of TWI that were developed and fleshed out better in recent years, compared to the original first iteration of the philosophy, and this has probably done a lot to boost its popularity.

Conclusion

TWI can have many benefits on the workflow of a modern organization when applied correctly. The core ideas behind it will probably keep evolving slightly over the next few years, but the fundamentals are sound and can be implemented in any size company.

Does your organization practice TWI? What results have you seen? Add your comments below…

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