TWI Summit - Presenters

TWI Summit Presenters

These individuals will make up the core presentation team. As thought-leaders in the areas of Training, Lean, and TWI, they will unveil power found in the proven TWI methodology.

Richard Abercrombie, TWI Master Trainer

Richard has over 20 years of experience in manufacturing, most of it with the Boeing Company in Washington state. There, Richard became involved in Boeing’s Lean Manufacturing initiative as a member of the Boeing Supplier Support Center which assists key Boeing suppliers, both domestic and international, with starting a continuous improvement program based on the Toyota Production System. To fulfill this role, Richard received training in TPS from the Shingijutsu company both in Japan and at Boeing suppliers.

Since retiring from the Boeing Company in 2001, Richard has continued to consult independently. Recognizing that TWI is one of the fundamentals supporting the Toyota Production System, Richard became certified in TWI by the Central New York Technology Development Organization (TDO) TWI Institute. Since that time, he has delivered the TWI supervisor programs to his clients in manufacturing, aerospace, steel, food, banking, and health care industries.

Richard has maintained a close relationship with TDO and is collaborating with them as the TWI Institute program expands. Now a TWI Master Trainer, Richard conducts train-the-trainer sessions for the TWI Institute in an unbroken line of master trainers from the original WWII TWI Institute.

Back to top

Jodee Bock

Jodee Bock is principal and founder of Bock’s Office Transformational Consulting. Jodee provides coaching, speaking, training, facilitation, development and delivery of training programs, workshops and seminars that support individuals and teams in succeeding at whatever they are committed to accomplishing.

She has spent more than 15 years in many facets of Corporate America, including newspaper editor, sports information director, corporate communicator, PR manager, corporate trainer, and management consultant.

Jodee currently holds certifications in TWI Job Relations Training from TDO in Syracuse, New York; Accelerated Innovation Training and Master Training and Innovation Coaching from SolutionPeople in Chicago, Illinois; and Life Purpose and Career Coaching from The Life Purpose Institute in San Diego, California.

She is a co-author of the book Don’t Miss Your Boat: Living Your Life With Purpose in the Real World, and author of The 100% Factor: Living Your Capacity.

Back to top

Mike Braml

Mike has more than 30 years of manufacturing and service industry experience that includes Lean, Six Sigma, and TOC Implementations that provides a strong foundation for his work as a certified TWI Institute Instructor for JI, JR and JM since 2005. His manufacturing management and continuous improvement experience has enabled him to help diverse enterprises gain competitive advantage to position themselves for robust futures.

Recently Mike has taken TWI outside of manufacturing applying the lean concepts and TWI to service public institutions including public schools, county worker environments, medical centers, and service organizations with great success. Mike completed his TWI Master Trainer for JI in 2007 and JR in 2008 and is on track to become a JM Master Trainer to invest his passion for the program to continuous improvement efforts in numerous markets.

Mike has a double major in Biology and Scientific Land Management, and has earned an MBA from Kennedy Western University. He has been certified in Production and Inventory Management through APICS, and has is a senior member in the society of Industrial Engineers. Mike is a NIST MEP certified instructor for Lean 101, Value Stream Mapping, 5S, Setup Reduction, Plant Layout, Kaizen Events, Cell Design, Kanban Systems, and Standard Work. Mike has implemented lean throughout small and medium sized companies assisting hundreds of companies to make significant continuous improvement gains.

Back to top

Glen Chwala

Glen is a seasoned Lean Manufacturing consultant and practitioner. He is a certified trainer for all three TWI programs; Job Relations (JR), Job Instruction (JI) and Job Methods (JM) and has delivered the program to hundreds of participants. Glen uses TWI to help manufacturers successfully sustain their Lean initiatives and to improve the effectiveness of all employee training and cross-training efforts.

Prior to joining CNYTDO, Glen held several operations positions where he led Lean Manufacturing initiatives across the globe. He worked with Cooper Industries, Crouse-Hinds Division as a Project Manager in the Improvement Operations Office developing and delivering training in the lean tools. Additionally, he led kaizen events across North American and European sites in both manufacturing and office environments. In total, Glen managed multiple projects resulting in over $2 million in annual savings. He was also intimately involved with Cooper Industries’ role out of its Six Sigma/Lean initiative known as the Cooper Manufacturing Variance Program (MVP). Glen led and participated in several successful Six Sigma based projects in Canadian and the US facilities.

Prior to Cooper Industries, Glen was employed with Prestolite Electric where he implemented lean tools to support the facilities transformation to Synchronous Manufacturing. Glen directed continuous improvement activities related to the manufacture of electronic voltage regulators and alternators. During this time he also played a significant role in the design and implementation of QS9000 and ISO9000 systems.

Glen began his manufacturing career with North American Medical Instrument Company as a Manufacturing Supervisor in the Injection Molding Department. This experience introduced him to the Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) as regulated by the FDA.

Glen is a graduate of Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY. He earned both a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters of Business Administration focused in Operations Management. He also managed the Canadian-US Business Consulting Service at Clarkson University.

Back to top

Maureen Conway

Maureen Conway is the Training Manager for Allsteel Inc, an HNI Corporation located at Muscatine IA. Conway holds a PhD in Education and Organizational Development from the University of Illinois and is among 1,200 globally having earned a Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP) through the American Society for Training and Development.

Conway has extensive background in instructor-led courses, online and accelerated courses as well and training in manufacturing, higher education and government industries. Her experience includes grant writing, instructional design, strategic planning, project management, project execution and evaluation/ROI of organizational development and human resource development initiatives and programs. Currently, Conway is the president of the Mississippi Valley Chapter of ASTD and a recent conference presenter at the Conference for Management and Leadership Development and the Women in Defense Conference on the national front.

Allsteel is currently implementing TWI JI and JR, The training department has designed a practical rollout process to assure the integration of the TWI tools with the Lean Manufacturing environment of its production system.

Donald A. Dinero

Donald A. Dinero, PE, CPIM has more than thirty-five years of experience designing and implementing manufacturing methods and processes and is the principal of Round Pond Consulting Services. His BS degree in Mechanical Engineering is from the University of Rochester and his MBA and MS (Career and Human Resource Development) degrees are from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He received his Professional Engineering license (NYS) in 1983 and his Certification in Production and Inventory Control from APICS in 1986.

Mr. Dinero helps companies implement Lean principles and believes that the Lean movement is hindered by its omission of TWI training. TWI offers fundamental skills training which helps to stabilize an organization, preparing it to seriously begin its Lean journey. In order to assist in stabilizing an organization and thus assist in the acceptance of Lean, Mr. Dinero is concentrating his efforts on spreading the word of TWI. He delivers training in all three of the ‘J’ programs and will add sessions in Program Development in the near future. In keeping with the “multiplier effect” cited by the Training Within Industry Service, Mr. Dinero also offers Train The Trainer sessions for the three ‘J’ programs. This allows an organization’s employees to independently deliver the training.

In an effort to spread the word of TWI, Mr. Dinero wrote Training Within Industry: The Foundation of Lean, which won a Shingo prize for research in 2006.

Back to top

Patrick Graupp, Senior Master Trainer, TWI Institute

Patrick began his training career at the SANYO Electric Corporate Training Center in Japan after graduating with Highest Honors from Drexel University in 1980. There he learned to deliver TWI and other training to prepare employees for assignment outside of Japan. He in turn was also transferred to a compact disc fabrication plant in Indiana where he obtained manufacturing experience before returning to Japan to become Programs Master Trainer delivering TWI around the world for Sanyo. Patrick earned an MBA from Boston University during this time and later published a book on how to teach Japanese staff to implement Job Methods Training outside of Japan. He was then promoted to the head of Human Resources for SANYO North America Corp. in San Diego, CA where he settled.

Patrick took vacation time to deliver a pilot project for CNYTDO in 2001 to reintroduce TWI in the US, and again in 2002 to reintroduce the full TWI Program at ESCO Turbine Technologies-Syracuse. The results at ESCO encouraged Pat to leave SANYO in 2002 and work with CNYTDO to deliver and document how to deliver the TWI program in the US as he was taught in Japan. Pat also describes this process in his book The TWI Workbook: Essential Skills for Supervisors, a Shingo Research and Professional Publication Prize Recipient for 2007. These standardized training manuals and materials are now used by the TWI Institute to train and certify trainers on how to deliver JR, JI and JM as was done by the TWI Service during WWII. Patrick also documented the format on how he was trained as a TWI Master Trainer (trainer of trainers) in Japan as he trained two new TWI Master Trainers for TWI Institute. TWI is now readily available nationally in English and in Spanish from the TWI Institute for companies to learn how Toyota trains new employees to strictly adhere to standardized operations and as a review of parts of the training system to enable quick learning to sustain TPS.

Brian Heymans

Brian Heymans has over 30 years experience in manufacturing organizations at executive levels. Brian is President of CSI, Continuous Systems Improvement, a consulting firm focusing on change management and the installation of lean management practices. Prior to establishing CSI, he was formally the President of the Kaizen Institute of America, and the Director New Business Development for KI globally, responsible for building consulting companies, client relationships, consulting niches and business alliances globally.

His primary experience in the people development game came while he was Kimberly Clark's Director of Human Resources in South Africa thoughout the 1980's. Because of the acute skills shortage there he developed a comprehensive leadership and skills development strategy for the company that embraced technical skills training for every single manufacturing job, supervisory skills for every supervisor and plant manager, and many other development approaches. He first encountered TWI in 1973 while researching for skills training progams. He used strategies very similar to the TWI components for his company as well as while serving as Chairman of the South African paper industry's association (ASSOPULP) technical training liaison committee.

He has developed a wide range of technical and supervisory training programs, and has extensive experience building training management strategies to fit business needs.

Originally from South Africa, he worked for Price Waterhouse, the De Beers Diamond Company and as Human Resources Director for the South African division of Kimberly-Clark, Brian designed and coordinated the company’s World-Class Manufacturing/TQM strategy that led to substantial increases in growth, profit and market share. South Africa honored this success by awarding the company the National Productivity Institute’s Gold Medal in 1991 (equivalent to the Baldridge Award.) He came to the USA early in 1991 to work for a Tier 2 automotive rubber and plastics supplier as their “Lean” Director. He joined the Kaizen Institute of America in 1994 as its Strategy Manager, eventually becoming its President.

His prime consulting focus is helping companies develop a strategy and process for the implementation of lean manufacturing practices, with a special emphasis on strategy, and the leadership and socio-technical interface.

Brian has successfully assisted large multinational manufacturing and service organizations in the implementation of world class manufacturing strategies and lean manufacturing. Companies he has consulted to include Ford, Rockwell Automation, Kraft Foods, APW, Actuant, and numerous companies in the automotive, electronics, printing, medical instruments and consumer products industries. He is a contributing author to the book “The Change Handbook”, is a frequent speaker at conferences, seminars and public workshops and has published several articles on leadership strategies for lean implementation.

He has worked extensively in Western Europe, Vietnam, China, Egypt, Australia, Japan, South Africa and throughout North America. Brian holds a master’s degree in Business Strategy/Management Development/Adult Learning Theory and a bachelor’s degree in finance and business law.

Back to top

Jim Huntzinger

Since 1988 Jim Huntzinger has been developing lean enterprises through system design and development, implementation, and guiding organizations both strategically and tactically through the transformation process. He began his career as a manufacturing engineer with Aisin Seiki (a Toyota Group company and manufacturer of automotive components) when they transplanted to North America to support Toyota. He spent eight years at Briggs & Stratton (a manufacturer of small engines) in a range of engineering and management positions working to implement and evolve lean into its manufacturing operations and business practices. Huntzinger also spent over seven years as a manufacturing consultant helping businesses, ranging from huge global corporations to small privately held companies, implement lean tools and strategies for the entire business enterprise. He has broad experience in lean implementation within machining, assembly, and fabrication for a wide range of companies and products.

Huntzinger has also researched at length the evolution of manufacturing in the United States with an emphasis on lean's influence and development. He has researched and worked to re-deploy TWI (Training Within Industry) within industry and uncovered its tie with the Toyota Way. He is also developing the history of Ford’s Highland Park plant and its direct tie to Toyota’s business model and methods of operation. Huntzinger graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering Technology and received a M.S. in Engineering Management from the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

Bryan Lund

Bryan Lund is a Lean Coordinator within Energizer’s Global Lean Office. He has been involved with Lean implementations in different industries including electrical assembly, and custom machinery manufacturing. His current challenge is to lead the implementation of TWI within Energizer’s global facilities.

In 2004, Bryan was a member of a local network of colleagues interested in improving approaches to standardized work. After two years of research and trials, this network of colleagues and local businesses is adopting TWI and rethinking current approaches to problem solving and standardization of work.

Bryan earned an AAS degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology from Vermont Technical College and holds a BS degree in Business Management from Colorado Technical University. He is an active member at both the local and national level of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, currently chair of the AME/SME/Shingo Certification Lean COA committee.

Jeff Maling

Jeff Maling is an Advisory Engineer at IBM’s Burlington, VT semiconductor manufacturing facility. He has been with IBM since 1987 and has held positions in Manufacturing, Equipment Engineering, Process Engineering, and most recently as a facilitator and instructor in IBM’s lean transformation program. He has also held positions in machinery design and custom automation development.

In 2004, Jeff worked with a group of colleagues from local companies to explore the benefits of TWI as part of IBM’s approach to improving standard work methods. The result has been a large-scale adoption of TWI as a problem solving tool that has been delivered to over 600 operators, technicians, engineers, and managers.

Jeff holds BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is a senior member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Green Mountain Chapter, and is active in school outreach and Engineer’s Week activities.

Back to top

Hal Macomber

Hal is a partner with Gregory Howell in the consulting company Lean Project Consulting, Inc. He is currently placing his attention on project leadership in a lean environment. By bringing together the work of Flores, Goldratt, and Ohno/Shingo with an emphasis on leadership he is intent to bring about a transformation in how projects are delivered. Project management, one of the most-cited career positions, is failing to produce the desired business results. Projects are routinely over budget, late, and fail in often significant ways to satisfy the customer and the project participants. The bulk of today’s improving efforts are
spent on doing a better job applying the same old techniques. In conjunction with the Lean Construction Institute, Hal has set out to change that.

Hal studied economics and operations research and then went on to get an MBA from Boston University in operations management. His preoccupation with operations effectiveness paid off when he learned about workflow, Fernando Flores’ language-action perspective reinterpretation of work.

Hal’s career took off. He moved from one industry and one role to the next:

Production control management of computer manufacturing

Materials management of software distribution

Division management of boiler manufacturing

Worldwide quality management of steam and gas turbine equipment design and
manufacturing

Consulting for operating and maintaining power stations and copper smelting

Software design for project management and consulting

Operations and consulting management of software development

Chief Operating Officer of integrated design-build construction operations

Consultant on lean project delivery, general business management, and leadership

Mike Martyn

Michael Martyn is the Founder and Managing Principle of SISU Consulting Group, a firm specializing in increasing stakeholder value through the development of lean leaders at each level of the organization. By creating transparency in the organization, implementing standard work, and raising the level of shared accountability, SISU works with each of its clients to build a sustainable continuous improvement program and significantly improve bottom-line results through the development of its most valuable asset, its people.

Mr. Martyn has extensive experience over a broad spectrum of service based and manufacturing environments. He has held numerous senior-level executive positions and has been successfully turning around companies since the mid-1990s. Mr. Martyn’s turn around of the world’s largest manufacturer of dollhouse and log cabin craft kits resulted in a 624% improvement in gross profit margins, an 89% reduction in production lead times, and a 451% improvement in EBITDA. During his tenure as President, the company underwent extensive process revitalization, including the implementation of a visual production system and the creation of a shop-floor leadership development program.

In addition to his work as a turnaround specialist, Mr. Martyn regularly works with Senior Management and Boards of Directors to create alignment across people and processes and assist in a variety of services such as the creation of custom training materials and conducting on-site leadership development. Some of the companies Mr. Martyn has worked with include: The Boeing Company, Barcardi and Company, The Dannon Company, Raytheon, La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries, Maytag Laundry, Old Mutual Financial Network, Shriner’s Hospitals for Children, ESCO Engineered Products, Business Transitions, and Stewart & Stevenson.

Mr. Martyn received his undergraduate Bachelors of Arts in Economics and English at Reed College, and earned a Masters of Business Administration at Portland State University. Mr. Martyn is the Executive Director of the Northwest Shingo Prize, a non-profit established to promote lean enterprise awareness and recognize companies in Oregon and Washington that achieve world-class status. He also serves on the board of the Harmony Montessori School and the Western Region of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence as well as being an active member of the Association for Corporate Growth and the Entrepreneurs Organization.

David Meier

David Meier is an internationally recognized authority on Lean Manufacturing and The Toyota Production System (TPS). David is the co-author of the best selling books, The Toyota Way Fieldbook, (McGraw-Hill, 2005), and Toyota Talent, (McGraw-Hill, 2007) with Jeffrey Liker. In these hands-on books David and Jeff detail the language, concepts, and tools that managers need to bring Toyota’s success-proven practices to life in any organization.

David had the opportunity to learn the Toyota Production System as one of the first group leaders hired at Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky facility in the plastics molding department. He was trained and mentored in Japan and Kentucky over a ten-year period by TPS experts including full-time coaching by several Japanese coordinators. In 2001, David founded Lean Associates, Inc., a consulting firm dedicated to supporting companies that are pursuing implementation of the Toyota Production System.

David has been a trainer and speaker for over ten years and he has presented training workshops in North America, Russia, Europe, and Asia for many groups including: the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, AME, The University of Michigan, the Montreal Board of Trade, ORGPROM Russia, Made In China, Inc., The Window and Door Manufacturers Association, AIM Inlines Thailand, Continuous Quality Improvement Network, and the Shingo Prize Conference. David has supported many companies in a variety of industries including healthcare, food, automotive, aerospace, wood and plastic products, chemical processing, metal machining, fabricating, welding, and assembly operations in both manufacturing and non-manufacturing work areas. He specializes in developing TPS expertise within organizations so that they become capable of achieving lean transformation.

Cindy Oehmigen

Cindy Oehmigen is a leader recognized for guiding organizations through change, improving manufacturing competitiveness, creating team environments, reducing costs, and developing staff potential. With over 20 years of diversified manufacturing and engineering experience in union and non-union settings, her expertise lies in lean manufacturing, plant layout, methods design and improvements, capital project management and workforce development.

Since joining TDO, Cindy has consulted with over 100 companies on lean initiatives and workforce development. As a certified trainer in all three TWI Training Within Industry modules Cindy has delivered programs to hundreds of employees.

At Crouse-Hinds, Cindy spear-headed projects in machining, assembly, wet processes, packaging and warehousing resulting in millions of dollars impact savings and work-in-process reductions. In addition, she directed the design and implementation of a 300,000 sq ft assembly and automated distribution center with a return of $2.5 million in annual savings. She also managed manufacturing and process engineering functions.

During her tenure at Carrier’s Carlyle Compressor Division, she specified and implemented a state of the art on-line maintenance management system and served as the superintendent of automated paint and final assembly operations. As the Director of Process Improvement at Loretto Management Corporation Cindy brought her skills in organizational efficiencies and problem solving techniques to the healthcare field.

Cindy is a graduate of United Technologies Lean Manufacturing University and has been certified in APICS, ASQC and in several quality control and management planning tools. She has a Bachelor of Science in Industrial & Management Engineering from the University of Iowa and a Masters in Business Administration from Syracuse University.

Dr. Alan G. Robinson

Dr. Alan G. Robinson is recognized as a leading authority on managing creativity and ideas and on lean production. His books have been translated into eighteen languages.

Corporate Creativity (coauthored with Sam Stern) was named “Book of the Year” by the Academy of Human Resource Management, and was a finalist for the Financial Times/Booz Allen & Hamilton Global Best Business Book Award.

His book Ideas Are Free was named Reader’s Choice by Fast Company magazine and one of the 30 best business books of 2004 by Soundview Executive Books. A syndicated business columnist for Scripps-Howard, Paul Tulenko, wrote about Ideas Are Free, “I rate this book 5 1/2 stars, a first in this category. It's that powerful. (Only the Bible and the Constitution receive 6 stars.)”.

According to the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, his 1991 book with Shigeo Shingo, Modern Approaches to Manufacturing Improvement, “remains a must-read for anyone interested in lean production”.

Dr. Robinson has advised leaders in more than a hundred and fifty companies in seventeen countries on how to improve their performance. Some of his more well-known recent clients include: the Federal Reserve Bank, Lucent Technologies, Interbrew, IKEA, Forest Laboratories, UBS, Alcan, Volkswagen, Standard and Poors, The Washington Post, Medtronics, Blue Shield of California, Toyota, Millitech, Bemis, Pyosa (the Mexican chemical company), Fanuc (the Japanese robotics company), Brookhaven National Laboratory, Wyeth, the Japan Industrial Training Association, and the Applied Physics Laboratory. He has served on the Board of Examiners for both the Shingo Prizes for Manufacturing Excellence and the United States' Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

He is currently on the faculty of the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the Johns Hopkins University, and a B.A./M.A. in mathematics from the University of Cambridge.

Robert J. Wrona, Director, TWI Institute

Bob began his manufacturing career at the Chevrolet Division of General Motors in Buffalo, NY while earning a BS from Canisius College. He broadened his manufacturing experience at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY while obtaining his MBA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Bob then joined a start up retail discount drug store chain in Syracuse, NY, where as VP of Organizational Development, he implemented training and “lean” just-in-time concepts for the company to grew from 12 stores to 140 stores with sales over $250 million. He returned to his manufacturing roots as an Organizational Development consultant in 1982 to implement TQM for small and mid-sized companies. This led to a study of the Japanese manufacturing techniques as they became known in the US and he contacted Professor Alan Robinson in 1998 after discovering TWI in his study of Kaizen who introduced him to Patrick who was employed by SANYO in San Diego. Their talk of reintroducing TWI in the US turned into a reality after Bob joined CNYTDO as a Lean Consultant in 2001 that provided a base for them to reintroduce TWI to companies in Syracuse, NY and now throughout the US.

After demonstrating that TWI enabled companies to achieve significant results with little investment in training by leveraging the knowledge and skills of their supervisor/team leader group, CNYTDO was soon responding to requests from companies throughout the US looking to do the same. The need for standardization to quickly spread the training was apparent with the first group of trainers that wanted to “personalize” or to “modernize” the methodology. After reviewing the archived materials from WWII with those used in Japan, Bob and Pat determined that to successfully deliver TWI they would have to recreate the materials for trainers to learn how to deliver TWI as the program was delivered during WWII and in Japan since 1945. Their work is documented in their book The TWI Workbook: Essential Skills for Supervisors that is a Shingo Prize winner.