Training within Industry

Lean Manufacturing has been adapted and perfected by Japanese manufacturers to ensure the highest quality at the lowest cost while engaging people at all levels of the process toward continuous improvement. What most people fail to realize is that the priniciples of lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System (TPS) specifically, found their origins in the Training within Industry program developed by the United States in the 1940's and 1950's as part of the war production effort. After the war ended, these same priniciples of standardization in job instruction, job methods, and job relations were utilized by Japan to rebuild their industrial infrastructure. Through rigorous discipline in creating and maintaining standards and by adherence to ongoing process improvement to eliminate waste in its various forms, the priniciples yielded phenomenal results. Much of what is taught at Toyota and other lean manufacturing icons is a direct translation from the materials used in the 1940's. This lens will provide you with the history of TWI, with original resources and guidelines in addition to the best on the web related to the resurgence of TWI in American industries of all types.

Picture credit: Hawaii War Records Depository (HWRD) Training Within Industry. First graduates in the territory of the job methods institute held by the training within industry program of the war manpower commission completed their course recently. Standing, is Virgil K. Rowland, TWI official from Wash. D.C., who conducted the course. Seated left to right, H.P. Dahlquist, John Scott, Harold Crawford, Wm. B. Jones, Elroy Fulmer, J.E. Milligan, W.L. Doering, Henry Duvauchelle, (not in the picture is Ralph Beck.)