Introduction
The Training Within Industry (TWI) Service was an official department of the of the War Manpower Commission during WWII. TWI Service existed between 1940-1945, training over 23,000 supervisors in primarily three basic skills:
- Job Instruction Training (JIT) or, skill of how to instruct
- Job Methods Training (JMT) or, skill of how to improve methods
- Job Relations Training (JRT) or, skill of how to lead people
As time progressed an additional need was recognized and developed in the form of a fourth program, aimed at training directors:
- Program Development (PDT) or, skill of how to spot a production problem and solve it through a training plan
A fifth program was developed sensitive to the unique characteristics present within unions:
- Union Job Relations Training (UJRT) or, skill in how to lead people particularly for shop stewards.
Through a planned "multiplier effect", four-hundred TWI Service representatives trained 23,000 supervisors in over 16,000 U.S companies during the war. In turn, those 23,000 supervisors trained and developed over 1.7 million U.S. workers in the TWI 'J' programs. [1]
Post-war TWI use
Consensus is that TWI methods were largely abandoned in the U.S. after the decommission of the TWI Service in 1945, due to an inherent complacency as the only industrial superpower. It is thought there was no urgent need for the TWI services.However, there were several indirect factors that may suggest the situation was more complex than mere complacency and actually a need for TWI Services existed and partially met.
First, a study of war production liquidation suggested that a gradual cancellation of war contracts would create the need for seven million jobs. [2] Many of these jobs would be filled by those very same that were displaced by the cancellations; as a war production plant converted to peacetime, the laid off wartime worker would come back on as a peacetime worker. Another inevitable situation is that temporary workers in another city would move back home, creating voids for others to fill as peacetime production was signaled to begin. Similar scenarios of rapid turnover and training was mitigated during the war through the TWI program.
The second factor in this scenario is that over $100 billion dollars were made available in consumer purchasing power through the war bonds program. [3] There was a definite desire for war production plants to reconvert and produce products for that pending market boom. An example of this conversion process was through products branded with Liberty badges, such as flat irons. Nationwide conversion certainly would have required re-tooling, re-training and many months of learning how to make consumer products, issues similar to the war conversion process and certainly could be assisted through the TWI program.
Third, TWI Service was decommissioned in September, 1945. Peacetime production training was assigned to the Bureau of Labor. It is possible that organized labor conflict, resulting from wage controls during wartime production, were given higher priority over peacetime training.
Fourth, TWI, Inc. was formed by Cleveland TWI District Representative, Lowell Mellen. Letters from Mellen dating May 1945, four months prior to the decommission of TWI Service, indicate that Mellen had local contracts signed in which Mellen's TWI, Inc. would provide services not unlike those delivered during the war. [4]
Fifth, the existence of TWI Foundation also indicates that the program did not fade away after the war and suggests industry realized the need for TWI consulting services. Other letters in possession by Mellen indicate TWI activity on the east coast by this non-profit group founded and operated by the former directors of the national TWI Service office: Channing Dooley, Walter Dietz, Bill Conover and Mike Kane. The TWI Foundation had private company membership policies, which may explain why TWI may have appeared to shift out of the public national spotlight after the war and into the semi-private world of management consulting and industry.
If this is evidence that TWI programs continued after the war, it is not limited to the boundaries of the United States. Mellen's TWI, Inc. spread the program around the world, installing national programs similar to the U.S agency in remote countries like Indonesia and in better known countries such as Japan. More to come on this topic, but suffice to say that many Japanese managers still utilize TWI programs in their unaltered form and function today, in 2008.
****This page is a work in progress****
Will you have a section on the renaissance of TWI in North America that began in the early 21st century?How 'bite-sized' ought a knol to be?
I the continuation of TWI is a must. I'm not sure what the right purpose of a knol is, except that it is meant to counter the wikipedia phenomenon, i.e., subject to open public edits. The wikipedia page will not allow us to actually post links like this without accusing us of spamming.
coming soon...Linkage to Continuous Improvement Methodologies
coming soon...Practical Applications of TWI in Modern Industry
Training Within Industry Materials. 1945. Hardbound copy of TWI Materials. U.S. Government Printing Office.
Final Report of Training Within Industry, Inc. 1951. Collection #91-098, unprocessed. Western Reserve Historical Society Library. Cleveland, Ohio.
TWI in Japan Final Report. 1956. Collection #91-098, unprocessed. Western Reserve Historical Society Library. Cleveland, Ohio.
External links & Additional Reading Materials
Dinero, Don. 2005. Training Within Industry, The Foundation of Lean Manufacturing. Productivity Press. New York, NY.
Training Within Industry Materials. 1945. Hardbound copy of TWI Materials. U.S. Government Printing Office.
References
- http://www.trainingw
ithinindustry.net/TW I Report 1945.pdf - Kaplan, A.D.H. 1944. The Liquidation of War Production. McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. New York and London.
- Kaplan, A.D.H. 1944. The Liquidation of War Production. McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. New York and London.
- Lowell Mellen Papers. 1923-1970. Collection #91-098, unprocessed. Western Reserve Historical Society Library. Cleveland, Ohio.
Jeff's Library
Further conjecture on the success of TWI during the War and it's abandonment afterward
Part of TWI's success must be attributed to the context in which it was deployed: (1) highly motivated and aligned workers, managers, and execs and (2) a very non-traditional workforce - substantially female but also black and hispanic - that was unfettered by traditional views of craft or mass production.
As the war came to a close, TWI/OPM began to plan for demobilization and some of the female workforce, seen the writing on the wall, began to organize to hold on to their jobs. Memoranda exist in which dealing with this "problem" is discussed by TWI/OPM staff.
In any event, when the boys came home it was overwhelming held that they deserved the jobs. Consider then, the effect of replacing a relatively altruistic, highly motivated, non-traditional workforce with one full of white men who had just spent lots of time being mostly bored, occasionally terrified and wounded, and always crushingly subordinate to someone, no matter how feckless that someone. "In for the duration," taking care of your buddies was paramount duty and honor and plain survival. For a sense of this read Catch 22.
When they came home to those jobs, command and control replaced continuous improvement, and if you wanted to stay alive (employment-wise) you shut up and went along, taking care of your friends when you could. TWI cannot flourish and will die in this kind of enterprise cultural climate.
I too, raided the archives at NARA. I was surprised to see only one other name in the retrieval record, yours. Now we can also add Mark Warren to the club! It's a fun experience if you like that sort of thing.
I admit, it is all a bit of conjecture and I'm trying to grasp at reasons for the demise of TWI. I feel that your additional information should be added to this knol. If you would like, I will add you as an author and you can edit away.
However, this explanation seems to simple. TWI was a supervisory training program, a tool to be used by management. The "boys coming home" explains why women worker numbers declined but doesn't explain why management was so reluctant to carry on the program.
I have some other speculative thoughts, but not quite ready to post them here.
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You're quite right to point out the lack of evidence provided (I don't have any to speak of) for my conjectures.
Still, I wonder how much effect TWI had several layers above the shop floor. These days it is sadly common for a firm to make some pretty darn impressive gains in manufacturing with lean production and then get bought for its success and then, less than a decade later, lose most of them because managerial knowledge work never changed at an executive level. In fact, early this evening I had just this discussion with a friend who is a leader in applying lean thinking in hospitals.
Here's another conjecture: if you don't take the 'learning-first' approach of TWI - leader as teacher, coach; knowledge emerges from experience, empirically, rather than from abstract models; respect for humans - all the way to the top you won't be able to sustain it outside of extraordinary circumstances like a global war.
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Roger G. Fisher
Invite as author
TWI
Thank you for the information. As I revisit TWI and understand it better, I plan to implement TWI to my company.
Again, thank you.
Roger Fisher
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