GA 494 | TWI and the Training Timetable with Brandon Brown

How was the training going? What do you think about the company so far? You know, is there anything we could do differently? You know, that conversation, the company has come back and told me that their people have said, I've never had a company do that before.

Today I'm excited to welcome Brandon Brown back to the show. Brandon's been on a number of times. I've known Brandon for many, many years. He's one of my favorite lean thinkers out there. Just a fantastic gu guy, super, super smart, super humble and just man, I just love talking to him. So today we, we really dive into a particular aspect of our continuous improvement movement known as TWI or training within industries. And Brandon is very knowledgeable on, on all things twi and we hone in on a. There's a particular tool taught within the JI or job instruction framework called the training Timetable and so sounds kind of boring. It's like, oh, that real exciting podcast round training timetable.

Woohoo.

No, but what Brandon does is he sort of explains how this one tool was used maybe incorrectly initially with, with a client of his, but then how it ended up really helping to transform the organization and go from like a 70% turnover to a much, much lower turnover. And so it's really good stuff. And then towards the end of it we got a little bit kind of, it was probably blame me, my fault, but I couldn't help it. Sometimes I never know what's going to happen on these podcasts and this was a classic example. But I've been, I was doing some reading this morning, some spiritual reading, and it was about, you know, you've all heard that the, when you die, there's a, there's two dates on your tombstone, you know, when you're born, when you die, and in between there's this dash. And so we talked about the dash and we talked about how continuous improvement, you know, can and I believe should play a role in that dash. And so yeah, it got a little bit deep. Maybe not, not your typical topic on the Gemba Academy podcast, but hopefully it adds some value. Anyhow, show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com look for episode 4. 94. Also, thank you to everybody who's left a review, if you don't mind. Scroll down and hit that five star and put a few words in there. I read every one of them and I really do appreciate everybody who, who listens. But then, you know, if you take the time to do that, I do apprec. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Brandon, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

It's going great. How are you, Ron?

I'm doing well, man. It's good to see you and hear you, hear from you again. I've missed you. It's been a while since we. We've connected, man.

Yeah, it's been a little while, but all good, all good things and learning each day. And that's. That's one of the great things about what we give the opportunity to do, which is learn.

Yeah, me and, Me and our mutual friend Skip, who I know is listening right now. He's probably running on that treadmill or.

Whatever he's doing, man. He's listening.

We talking about you, boy. You know, it was all good, though. We were like reminiscing about the, about all the TWI and kata and all that, and. And yeah, I always appreciate you, Brandon, and all you do for. For the Lean World and TWI kata and everything in between. So anyhow, you've been on the show before, Brandon, and we'll link to all your previous episodes in the show notes. But you know how we, like, started. It's a quote, so what do you got?

Quote that I, I guess I've been trying to practice more than anything or put into practice is one by Einstein. It says problems cannot be solved by the thinking within the framework in which they were created. And sort of a challenge of thinking outside the box. And so I've definitely been challenged with that with some recent clients and some recent work that I've been doing just to change, analyze the thinking, I guess with how did this problem, what got us to this point? And then, okay, let's change our framework. Let's see if we can't look at it. As my friend Steve Medlin says, we look at 10 degrees kind of to the. To the. To the side. So problems can't be solved within the framework they were created.

I love it. All right, hey, Brandon, give us a rundown on your background and how you got into this line of work, and then tell us about your consulting work and all the fun stuff that you're up to these days.

All right. So after school, I started my career in design engineering. Designed a couple products. I have a mechanical engineering degree and an industrial master's, but then moved into manufacturing engineering and then from there into operations management and started a couple of plants in the Southeast for Central States manufacturing, and then was able to come back to my home state of Arkansas and do a little work with the state Manufacturing Extension Partnership. Arkansas Manufacturing Solutions is the one here. There's one in all 50 states in Puerto Rico, I believe. And that's where I first got introduced to working with various clients and trying to find out what was the pain, where was the need that the company was experiencing and then how can we apply certain aspects of lean twi improvement kata coaching kata. You know, you know what, what would work here as far as either whether it's they want a full transformation or whether they just simply need a couple of point solutions and couple of areas. So that gave me a springboard into individual coaching of companies. Started my own business in early 2014, 2015 officially formed continuous coaching Commitment. And I've had a chance to work outside of manufacturing as well. You mentioned Skip Steward, chief improvement officer at Baptist Memorial Healthcare. Gave me an opportunity with One Hospital, the DeSoto Hospital in Mississippi, and that just exploded from there. Call in some help from other, other colleagues and other teammates joined the team and we were in about 14 hospitals at one point, at the peak before COVID Covid definitely put the brakes on a lot of people going into hospitals at that time. And then since then I've gone back to working in with manufacturing and different, different ones. So that's. Yeah, that's my main background and focus area for me right now is lean TWI training within industry and the improvement kata coaching kata.

Got it, Got it. All right, well, so what I want to focus on today is one of the, one of the things that you just talked about was TWI training within industry. So in particular we're going to kind of hone in on a certain aspect of that program. But maybe just for the benefit of the listeners, let's just start at the start. High level. Brandon, what's TWI? Why should anybody care?

TWI's training within industry has really three main tenants. Job instruction. How do you develop the skill of instructing others? And many supervisors haven't been taught that they may be great operators, they may not be the best.

Most haven't been taught that.

Most haven't been taught that. Exactly. They may be great operators. And then way to get someone up to speed. Hasn't been job relations, how you deal with the people issues, the people problems, job methods, which is improving the methods from where we're at now. How can we improve it? Born out of the war Manpowers Commission in World War II, Rosie the Riveter is the kind of the icon. Everybody is probably familiar with that and it's been around since then. It's been. Had its resurgences through the years and I feel like Just, just like in World War II. There the men, most of the men were drafted and taken out of the workforce and refilled by hard working housewives. And my granny worked at Ammun plant in, in Arkansas here just outside of North Little Rock. But many of them came in without the skill of manufacturing or any skill of, of inside the plant. And what I'm hearing now from people is we're getting people from the workforce or into our workforce. They've never seen the inside of a manufacturing facility. They've never worked under the framework of an organizational structure that has managers, supervisors, lead people, continuous improvement engineers and the like. And so it's, it's completely different than what they had before. So I feel like we, we're in a war for talent. And I know during COVID that was a, a definite war on nursing nurses were in huge demand. So I kind of have told clients when they start talking to me about their needs and their hiring needs and their. We don't train well and, and you know, we bring people in and we get the first break or lunch and they hit the bathroom and FBI can't find them. You know, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's reaching a crisis stage almost in many, many, many, many companies.

Okay, got it. So, so ji. Job instruction. So we often hear when we're, when we're teaching it that we're trying to do a, find a way to get, get a person individual to quickly remember how to do a job correctly, safely, conscientiously. Right. Sort of the tagline of, of job instruction. And I know one, one of the steps there Brandon, in, in job instruction is to prepare a, a timetable or training timetable. So why don't you talk a little bit about what is this timetable? Is it a, is it a similar to. Maybe people are familiar with like a, like a cross training matrix or skills matrix or something like that. So what's that all about within the Twiji framework?

So in the, in the classroom, if anyone has been exposed to training within industry job instruction or has researched or read about it, it's a particular point in the week where we cover who needs to be trained for which jobs and we, you know, we go through creating and actual plan for a few jobs and it's meant for them to decide who they in their department is not trained up in a certain area and what who do who. My value valuable resources that could could help cross train or, or, or if someone were to retire or someone's going on FMLA or there I know something's coming down the pipe. How do I plan for that, how do I prepare for that? I had always looked at it from a standpoint of, okay, we're showing them how to develop a plan and how to be intentional about their training, but really it's an accountability tool as well. And if we don't, as TWI instructors, hand that back to the company and say, okay, this is what Joe or Sarah has developed as far as what they want to do over the next two to six to, to 10 weeks, then there it was, a great class. But as you know, the most important day is Monday when the class is over. And so it's been as an accountability tool. But from the standpoint, the way I've experienced it within the framework of a couple of manufacturers that I've worked with, they do it better or, or not as well to a certain degree. And I'm thinking of a, a recreational vehicle company that we did some things different related to the, quote, the quota problems can't be solved within the thinking and the framework in which they were created. So I started talking to them more after the class about how they would use it. And they were really reluctant to put down dates, really reluctant to put down specific times. And then from there I developed a process of coming back and saying, okay, let's do what I call a validation. I'll come back at two weeks, I'll come back at six weeks, or if we're doing it virtual, I'll get online at two weeks, I'll get online at six weeks, make sure that they're developing their skill, the skill of instructing. And I found out very quickly that these problems that they were experiencing and the reason why they would not put down a specific date is that they couldn't, in their mind, they could not put down on paper what they wanted to do with Joe and Sarah and Sally and Tara and Stephanie and Bobby. And they, they didn't know where they were going to move them to. How would I move somebody if somebody is going to be out? I can't, you know, tell who's going to be called calling in. We've got tremendous turnover where a lot of companies are experiencing 70 turnover. So it's a huge reluctance to put a time down that I could even come back and do what I call the validations or get online and do the job validations that they knew the skill. And so it just, it's kind of dawned on me one day that if I were in their position, I, I think I could empathize with them that I would be reluctant to myself to put down something in the future that I don't know who's going to be in my department or who might be shifted and pulled out of my department and things like that. And so we did it.

Let me ask you a quick question though, just to interject there for a second. So I. Using a lean analogy, you know, we'll say, some companies say, oh boy, we gotta, we gotta get one piece flow. You know, we're just horrible. Batch producer over here. We got one piece flow. Problem is, you know, they're. There's no stability at all to their, to their environment. Right. And so they're not ready for one piece flow. Right. Like they got to get some basic stability in place. And one, I'm wondering, is there, is there a. Is there something similar going on in an environment to where they've got 70% turnover and everybody hates being there? And you know, something like that, Are they ready for a training timetable? Like, what do you think about that?

Yeah. If we can't stabilize the process or we can't create a standard, and as Ono says, you can't improve. Right. So we started looking at it with this particular company that makes these sporting or recreational products, and we looked at their onboarding process and I worked with their plant manager in one end and said, okay, how can we get better pool of people coming in? And the people that do come in, whether we're contract employees or temporary employees or whether we're hiring in full time, how can we create that experience where there isn't, you know, chaos? And in the other areas within Kata where we're working with this company and other areas to try and improve and stabilize processes, we started to have discussions about how do we connect the onboarding with this planned training or with this planned training timetable. And I don't know if one of the supervisors said it or if, if we just came out in discussion of, well, if I knew what I wanted to do with them for the first two to four weeks, then I might could put a plan together. And so I thought, well, that's, that's a different way of thinking about it. How would you create a generic or general plan? If I, if I could take a person and take them from day one all the way through day 16, because this company's working on four 10s, what would I do with them? So we had a more of a brainstorming or white page session where we just got out white pages and I got the eight or so Supervisors that from the beginning of the process to the end of the process, there's weld, there's fab, there's weld, there's paint, there's assembly, there's final assembly. And I put them up in pairs and I said, I'm going to give you a new person and what would you do? What are the jobs? So you just started out writing jobs that they would have them do. The person needs to know this basic job, this basic job, and then up for 20 minutes and then I have them switch and have them have a move to another station, get with another person. So the paint person originally might be working with the weld supervisor. Now that person's working with the vinyl assembly person. So there's a. Different perspectives were being shared. And so I, I gave them different vantage points and different thinking from different people within that had all been through this class. They, they, they, they knew the job instruction. They could train people, they knew the skill, how, where were they going to go with it? And in discussions after that session, we were able to lay out from day one to day 16 in, say, their welding department, there's a handful of six to eight jobs that they thought they could get someone completely through and welding a product independently in the first 13 days.

Okay.

And in the, in the pain area, they thought there was a handful of jobs that they could list and take someone through in the first 16, 14 to 16 days there. But I knew that wasn't enough. I knew that, that there's still that human factor of. And they began getting good feedback. Hey, I've never been at a company before that day. One, they, and two, they laid out a plan for me. They, they told me where I would be. So I knew for the next four weeks what I was going to be doing. Yeah, I'm not lost. I'm not just wandering in this, in this new environment. Some, like, some as in World War II, hadn't seen the inside of a manufacturing facility. And so we developed that. And then the last, the one of the last connections was connecting it to the onboarding and, and trying to close the loop. How do we close the loop with this person from a job relations standpoint? And so we've set up 15 minute, for the first two weeks, every day for 15 minutes. They're going to go back to their supervisor, go back to the lead person and just have a general discussion. How are things going? You know, how, how are you? How is, how is the training going? What do you think about the company so far? You know, is there Anything we could do differently. You know, that conversation, they literally, I've had them come back and tell me the company has come back and told me that their people have said, I've never had a company do that before. I've worked at six different places in the last maybe year and a half. No one has ever one, laid out a plan and two, no one has ever actually followed up with a 15 minute conversation to do exactly what's on the card, follow up, see how things are going, taper off the instruction, do exactly what's on the card. And it's, it's really made a difference in their, in both in how they're, they've seen an improvement then in their.

Turnover and all that.

Yes, we're starting, starting to see that, see that go down and we're starting to see the supervisors in the supervisors rank. There's more stability. They are now the next step for them obviously to go to leader standard work and to go to some things, you know, that they do on a standardized basis and build on the other aspects of lean. But this has given them a structure. Yeah, it's not a cross training matrix or anything like that. It's specific for that one person coming through. But it does not have to be, you know, it's not that they can't move them around within this training timetable to different jobs and different things as need be and as production calls for it.

Well, I mean what I'm hearing is it's, it's classic respect for people, right? I mean, we get all crazy about all these twi ji, blah blah, blah. You know, it's like, hey, I've got an individual, a human being who's bringing their body and their talent, their heart, their mind, their soul into this company. And I'm going to say, hey, how about we do this? How about we show you what we want you to do. We respect you and your talents and guess what they're doing then that, that person who's learning this is intrinsically motivating. Right? There's mastery, autonomy, purpose, all those things built into that. And so there's some deep, deep behavioral changes happening when you simply sit down with someone in this job breakdown sheet and say, hey, here's how you do a job. Let me show you. And then how about you show me and here's why, you know, and I mean that's classic respect for people. And that's what I'm so passionate about, twi. And just lean in general, you know, because we're, it's, it's about people. We get lost sometimes and oh, you should do it this way, you should do it that way. Use this method. Use that method. Ah, you know, use a method. You know, there's some methods that might be better than others, but in the end, if you're respecting people and you're trying to help them be better and improve themselves, man, you're never going to have turnover. Who's going to want to leave that?

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Going to want to leave that?

Exactly. And I think it was from. You had a podcast earlier this year, just fairly recent, I think that I was listening to. It was the one I think that Skip had on from the Toyota Supplier center and he gave that definition of what TPS was. It was Jamie Bonini that you had on and that, that podcast from the TSSC who said to them, toyota production system is an organizational culture of highly engaged people that are solving problems and are innovating to drive performance. Those were his exact words. And when I, when I hit, that hit me going down the road as I was listening to that podcast, listen to many of your podcasts going down the road. And I, and I started thinking about, I was on the way to this client before we started this. How do, how do I get them to create a timetable that can be beneficial and be well, they need something to show respect for people. And I don't know that they truly understand what Toyota means by respect for people. Yeah. And I remember Julie Simmons husband Scott was talking to me one time. I was doing a podcast with him or video and he was telling me a story about a person had been in a position, I believe he'd worked for a scope manufacturer, maybe Leopold or one of the scope manufacturers out there. And, or this may have been a different client that he was working with, but he had someone from Toyota with him that, that was a Toyota consultant, you know, and they went up to, to an individual and they shook his hand and he said, hey, you know, introduce himself. And he said, you know, how long have you been, how Long have you been working here at this station? He said, you know, 25 years. He said, no, no, I mean, what. How long have you been working at this. This station? And gentleman said, 25 years. And he just kind of paused and they had a little bit more conversation, just, you know, small talk. And Scott said when they went around the corner, that. That guy lit into us. You are disrespecting this individual. You're not tapping into his potential. You are not allowing him to move and grow into other areas he could be contributing in other. You are disrespecting him. And so Scott, you know, Scott told me, I always thought respect for people was being nice to them, talking nice to them, you know, and being, you know, you know, from that standpoint of respect. But it's respect from tapping into their potential and tapping into their ideas and their involvement and their engagement. And exactly what Jamie said in that was an organization of highly engaged people. Yeah, you know, I know you're a.

Person of faith, Brandon, as am I. And. And this morning I was actually reading, doing some spiritual reflections and some various readings I do every morning.

And.

And it was the famous story. We've all heard it. You know, sometimes it's spiritually oriented, sometimes it's worldly oriented. But talking about, you know, the two dates on someone's tombstone, you know, there's when they were born and then when they die, and then what's in between. There's a dash.

Right.

And so it's like, how do you. How do you want your dash to be defined?

Right.

And, you know, for us as, you know, believers, there's obviously things beyond the dash, right, that go after that last. But just this. Keeping it real. And just like, as far as, like, that dash, part of my passion for this. This movement of ours of continuous improvement is I just can't imagine a better framework to orient your life around to. And that's. I know. I don't mean just like making recreational vehicles more efficiently or, you know, making more money at Gemba Academy. I mean, those are ways that, yeah, Lean can help us.

And.

And. And it does, but it's bigger than that, man. You know, it's. It's. It's. How do you be a better human being?

Right, right.

And so all these things that we're talking about, they're all oriented to that dash. What do you think about that?

Well, the first thing I think about is if. If you're standing in front of the ultimate judge and you're having to answer, you know, any questions, I think the one thing would be what did, what did you do with your dash? When it comes with the rest of the people that you interacted with throughout your life, how did you, how did you handle your dash? Exactly what you're saying, what did you do to impact others? Because that's what we're put here for, serving others. If we're, if we're not here to serve others and help others, then we've got, we've got chaos and animosity and all the other problems.

And I almost feel like us continuous improvement practitioners, which is everyone listening right now. Because you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you weren't a continuous improvement practitioner of some sort or you're interested in it, or you're thinking about doing it. You know, I really do think, you know, to who much is given, much is expected. I feel like we're called to really step it up and cooperate with the world and try to get into the world and be inside the world, not of the world, but inside the world and make it better. And man, we know how to do it. You know, we've got, we've got these things at our fingertips that we all know how to wield and we just got to have the courage to go out there and actually do it right. And I don't know, man, it's pretty big, it's pretty deep when you think.

About tech that way and getting, getting into the mindset that's, that's in any of this business that we're working in is how is this person thinking, what are they experiencing? Because when we go in as out external coaches, we're trying to quickly get to the root of how they see their world, how they see their problems, how they see the day to day issues that they're faced with and the, any chaos. And so it's our job to try and reduce that chaos, stabilize it as we were talking about earlier. And so that's, that's one of the more challenging things I think is how in a short period of time, how can I look at it through their lens? How can I look at the operation now? I can see things that need to be improved and I could go in and say, well, I would set up this here, I'd set up Kanban here, I'd set up some type of flow system here or these racks. You're having to spend too much time with the forklift moving things around. But, but they're seeing a lot more people related issues and things that how do I maximize? I think the question I need to try and communicate and I need to try and understand is what is your ability to maximize their potential, the other person's potential and the people that you're given rather than being the next person through the door, you know? Yeah.

You know, the thing, Brandon, that I appreciated about what you said earlier was about that supervisor who would go back to the team, you know, after the fact and you know, after the training had been sort of tapering off and say the something to the effect of how's it going? Like, how are you? Like just those words, those three words, how are you? You know, and then just stop and look and listen. You, you're so good about that, Brandon. Like, you know, one mouth, two ears, right? You in that proportion. Right. Like just that, just how are you? You know, it's not lean, it's not twi. How are you? You know, because so much, there's so much, you know, hurt in the world. You just don't know what people are bringing to work. Maybe they've had a sick or their, their spouse is dying of cancer. We just don't know, you know, and we're asking them to do a training timetable and they're dealing with cancer over here, you know what I mean? All right, so that's again, the dash man.

Exactly. And that's, that's, you know, that, that's where the true personal interaction impacting others and then, and also learning, like you said, you know, just be quiet, listen to what they have to say. You learn from, from that as well. And at least I know I do. And hopefully the people that I'm coaching, hopefully I'm coaching them to stop and listen, you know, ask that open ended question and stop and listen. And then how are you going to apply that to the next coaching session or the next interaction with that individual?

Something that you taught me many years ago, you probably don't remember, but I think it was on a podcast, I don't know, or maybe one of our conversations. But you told me, Ron, you said, ron, sometimes you just got to be okay with silence. And I'll never forget that, you know, like when you ask a question, sometimes you're met with silence. And that's okay.

Right, right. And.

But that's hard.

It is, it is because people are wanting that interaction. They're wanting, they're wanting a response. They're wanting either an answer or they're wanting, you know, and so just, just listening. And in this case, I, I never, I never would have come upon this version of a training timetable to address the need and the need was they didn't know how to get the person going because they're, I was asking them to plan something two weeks, six weeks out. That was out of their, out of their normal activity. You know, there it's in addition to, in the beginning, it's in addition to, you know, training others is in addition additional task for them. And so that's, that's where it seemed like the barrier was. They, they couldn't grasp that. So how can I stop and listen to what their viewpoint is and then therefore form a situation where they could just express themselves? That was the power of the session. We, we had about a three hour session where we had those 20 minute intervals and, and that's I think what brought and surfaced this to something they could use. They could take the traditional training and they could use it to fit their immediate needs.

Yeah, that's so good man. Brandon, man, as always, I love talking to you, man. We, we need to not wait a hundred episodes or however long it's been since we last chatted. You're going to be at ame, right?

That's right, yeah. I'm doing, doing a TWI and kata kind of fused workshop. So we're going to use, when you use the domino traditional training that I've done and I've infused some job instruction with that and related to the dominoes. And it's kind of that first experiment, you know, is how do we set up some stabilization, how do we get some, some structure to the very first couple of rounds within that. So that's what it's, it's, it's designed to be, is designed to show the interaction and what I call the marriage between God and twi.

Love it, Love it. Hey Brandon, if folks want to connect with you personally, what's the best way?

Well, they can register and go to AME, of course and go to the workshop on October 30 this year. But my website, obviously Continuous coaching commitment, all1word.com. There's a lot of information there. Contact me directly. My phone number is always at the bottom of my emails. 479-856-1919 and Brandon cottonmastercoach.com.

Yeah, awesome. And you're on LinkedIn as well.

LinkedIn, yes. You may have to look under C. Brandon Brown, my first initial this on there. But we also have a company website. You can look for continuous coaching commitment there as well.

Okay, well we'll get it all linked up in the show notes. So folks, just scroll down on the app. You're listening to and and all the links will be there and we'll link to your previous episodes as well because we've had some fun over the years talking about all kinds of stuff man. So hey man, I appreciate you. I look forward I'll be there in Cleveland and we'll maybe we'll we can I'll I'll rang over and we'll we'll do a no little podcast right there in in the Amy.

Sounds good Ryan. All right man.

Appreciate you man.

Be good you.

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