By: ANDREA LAHOUZE
07/01/2010
John Berger is no stranger to the benefits of training within industry (TWI). In 1995, when Berger was working for global manufacturing giant Emerson, he was challenged to move an entire product line of electro-mechanical sensors from Minnesota to Singapore.
At Emerson’s Minnesota plant, processes for manufacturing the sensors were documented, but didn’t include the institutional knowledge needed for a successful technology transfer. There are three modules of TWI: job instruction, job methods, and job relations. The job methods and job instruction training helped employees at the Minnesota plant to better document their processes so they would have clear-cut procedures for the new Singapore employees. Once the product line arrived in Singapore, workers there used TWI to maintain and improve future procedures.
Berger credits TWI with much of the move’s success. “TWI adds the ‘what, how, and why’ elements into the procedure so that the operators understand what they’re supposed to do, how they’re supposed to do it, and why they’re doing it,” says Berger. “The ‘why’ part of things really helps them to get the quality aspects locked into their heads about why it is important to do something [a certain way], vs. taking a shortcut.”