Supply chain partners: Training within industry promotes common goals
Sidney Hill, Jr., executive editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 2/14/2008 3:40:00 PM
Lean supply chains don’t just happen. They emerge from strong working relationships between supply chain partners who are thoroughly committed to continuous improvement.
That’s the type of relationship that Donnelly Custom Manufacturing Company has with one of its largest customers—Marvin Windows and Doors.
A cornerstone of this relationship is a Lean technique known as Training within Industry (TWI). This technique helped Donnelly, an Alexandria, Minn.-based maker of custom injection molded parts, greatly improve production efficiency. It also played a part in Donnelly receiving the Marvin Windows and Doors Silver Supplier Award for 2007.
Donnelly adopted TWI in 2005, and started sharing it with Marvin a year later. "Sharing our knowledge and best practices such as TWI is one way that we form high performance partnerships, rather than merely effective supplier relationships, with our customers," Donnelly President Ron Kirscht says.
The TWI approach gives companies proven tools for embedding the principles of continuous improvement into the corporate culture. There are three basic elements to TWI:
• Job relations—how to gain cooperation of others to get things done;
• Job methods—how to improve an existing method or process; and
• Job instructions—how to train someone effectively.
The TWI approach is a perfect complement to a Lean program because it’s a streamlined method of imparting key principles to groups of employees. The training for each element consists of five two-hour sessions taught to groups of 10 or fewer. The first session typically is a lecture in which the trainer imparts basic information. The remaining sessions are spent applying TWI techniques to problems that students bring from their workplaces.
Guiding principles
Students leave with solutions to their individual problems and a set of cards listing the guiding principles for applying the particular element in which they were trained.
For instance, Job Relations students get a two-sided card with methods for gaining worker cooperation on one side and techniques for dealing with personnel conflicts on the other.
The methods for gaining cooperation are:
• Let each worker know how he or she is doing;
• Give credit when credit is due;
• Tell people in advance about changes that will affect them; and
• Make use of each person’s ability.
The techniques for resolving conflicts are:
• Get the facts;
• Weigh and decide;
• Take action; and
• Check results.
A TWI initiative can be launched by training employees on any of the three elements. Donnelly started with Job Relations. “We had been doing Lean for a couple of years and we wanted to develop leadership skills and the ability to handle personnel type issues like working in teams,” says Sam Wagner, Donnelly’s director of advanced manufacturing.
Donnelly got its initial TWI education through Minnesota Technology, Inc., a not-for-profit organization that offers business consulting to Minnesota-based companies. “They brought in a master trainer to train several companies in the area,” Wagner says. “We sent several people to the training and some of them became certified trainers.”
Donnelly ultimately designated three individuals to coordinate ongoing training in each TWI element. “To date, we have trained about one-third of [the company’s 230 employees],” says Wagner, who is the lead Job Methods trainer.
“When we started with Job Relations, people saw it as an effective way of dealing with existing personnel issues, as well as a way of preventing future problems.”
Visible impact
The impact on Donnelly’s business has been visible. As a short-run manufacturer, Wagner says Donnelly’s Lean initiatives focus heavily on equipment changeovers.
“We do roughly 40 changeovers a day,” Wagner explains, “and we look for ways to make those changeovers happen more quickly, with no mistakes, and in ways that are less physically demanding for our employees.”
Donnelly has set standard changeover times for the various sizes of machines in it plant. Wagner reports that those standards are consistently being exceeded, and he believes TWI will allow Donnelly to beat them by even wider margins going forward. “TWI is an element of sustaining a Lean program,” Wagner says. “And that typically is the hardest part of Lean.”
Marvin Windows and Doors, based in Warroad, Minn., had started its own TWI program, but had trouble locating a Job Methods trainer. It approached Minnesota Technology about upcoming classes in that element, and the organization put out a call to area companies that might be offering it at their facilities.
“We responded immediately because they were our customer,” Donnelly’s Wagner recalls.
Two Marvin employees went to Donnelly’s plant for five two-hour training sessions, and a tighter bond between customer and supplier was formed.
The training centered on ways of improving some of Donnelly’s processes, and the Marvin employees were able to apply those techniques to their own operations. “It made no difference that they were from a different company,” Wagner says. “The TWI methods are applicable to any type of manufacturing.
“It was nice to have customers come in and give us a fresh perspective on our own processes,” he continues. “They came up with some good improvements for us. It’s difficult to think about showing customers how to spot waste in your processes, but in the end, we built a certain level of trust by doing that.”
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