(Donnelly Custom Manufacturing: Alexandria, MI) -- Despite the more than 60 years since training within industry (TWI) was created in the United States to ramp up production of war materiel during World War II, implanting TWI skills in an organization still takes great planning and effort. Patrick Graupp and Robert J. Wrona, authors of the upcoming Implementing TWI: Creating and Managing a Skills Based Culture (CRC Press, 2010), use their 10 years of experience in implanting TWI in companies across the United States and around the world to describe critical elements and point out key stumbling blocks to a successful TWI implementation.
The book includes several case studies illustrating how a company can attain the full promise of TWI, and one of these is Donnelly Custom Manufacturing. The chapter titled “The Role of a Champion at Donnelly Custom Manufacturing” focuses on how important it is to have a champion to lead the way with full support of top management. The following excerpts are from that chapter.
Sam Wagner, director of advanced manufacturing, joined Donnelly knowing that management understood the importance of sustaining new initiatives rather than continually starting a new flavor-of-the-month program that Ron Kirscht, Donnelley’s president, referred to as “whim du jour” management. With the help of Rick Kvasager and Bill Martinson, business-growth advisors at Enterprise Minnesota, a consulting firm that helps small and mid-size companies develop and implement growth strategies, TWI quickly became a key part of the Donnelly lean implementation plan.
TWI consists of three key teachings: job instruction, job methods, and job relations. Because other people reporting to Wagner on the leadership team had day-to-day operating responsibilities, it was decided to have three of these team members become TWI trainers. Job instruction was a natural extension for Bradley Andrist, who was already responsible for training as the training and continuous improvement coordinator. As director of manufacturing, David Lamb was addressing execution and personnel issues in the workplace, so he opted for the job relations module. Wagner viewed job methods as a foundation for an idea program to engage people in the improvement process, so it was the module he wanted to direct.
Donnelly now had an enthusiastic cadre of people, supported by inspired leadership from the top of the company, ready to move forward with TWI—a formula that would ensure a high level of success with sustained commitment.
Lean was introduced to Donnelly in 2003, followed by TWI in 2005, and both programs were fully integrated in 2007. Annual sales increased more than 57 percent during these four years, an average of 12 percent each year. Income increased by 200 percent during this time period, allowing the company to invest in people (including companywide bonuses, which increased by more than 250 percent during this same period), facilities, and new technology to better serve customer needs and maintain its competitive edge. There is no question that the combination of lean and TWI at Donnelly contributed immensely to these outstanding performance results.
Like most other manufacturers around the world, Donnelly experienced a sudden reduction in orders from all of its customers as a result of the economic crisis that surfaced globally during the last quarter of 2008. According to company president, Ron Kirscht, although the company recorded a slight increase in sales and profits in 2008, results were negatively affected by the sudden drop of business and are therefore not included in Donnelly’s year-to-year comparisons. Although the company had to lay off 10 percent of the work force in early 2009, in April of that year they went on Minnesota’s Workshare Program, which allows a company to “lay off” employees for one day a week while maintaining their employment for the remainder of the week (essentially a 20-percent reduction). This enabled Donnelly to retain its trained and talented work force while reducing overall expenses. In September 2009, it was able to leave the Workshare Program and began to recall the employees who had been laid off earlier in the year. By December 2009, Donnelly had recalled everyone and began hiring additional people as well.
According to the Plante Moran 2009 Report, which was based on 179 North American plastics processors and published in Plastic News on Feb. 25, 2010, median employee turnover in the industry was 34.4 percent for all companies and 25.5 percent for successful companies. Donnelly’s turnover held at 10.2 percent for that same time period. Although many factors come into play here, these figures clearly indicate that people view Donnelly as a good place to work, thanks to the many efforts of management to engage people in their work.
As Peter Drucker wrote, “Work belongs to the realm of objects. It has its own impersonal logic. But working belongs to the realm of man. It has dynamics. Yet the manager always has to manage both work and working. He has to make work productive and the worker achieving. He has to integrate work and the worker.” Donnelly is now clearly on that path.
Implementing TWI: Creating and Managing a Skills Based Culture by Patrick Graupp and Robert J. Wrona is schedule for publication by CRC Press, the principle science and technology book division of the Taylor & Francis Group, in November.
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