Staff
 Robert
Trachtenberg
TWI President and CEO - rtrachtenberg@twi-institute.org
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Robert Wrona
TWI Executive Director - rwrona@twi-institute.org
Bob began his manufacturing career with six years at the Chevrolet
Division of General Motors in Buffalo, NY while earning a BS from
Canisius College. He spent four years at Eastman Kodak, in Rochester,
NY where he obtained his MBA from Rochester Institute of Technology
before joining a start up retail organization in Syracuse, NY where
he soon became VP Organizational Development implementing training
and “lean” just-in-time concepts as the company 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. This led to implementing TQM for small and mid-sized companies
that in turn led to a study on how to implement Japanese manufacturing
techniques as they became known in the US. Bob contacted Professor
Alan Robinson in 1998 when he discovered TWI was part of Kaizen
in Japan. This led him to Patrick Graupp who was employed by SANYO
in San Diego and the two of them talked about reintroducing TWI
in the US. They were not able to pursue this common interest until
Bob joined CNYTDO as a Lean Consultant in 2001 at which time they
reintroduced TWI training to US companies for the first time since
the end of WWII.
Having demonstrated that TWI training enabled companies to achieve
results with little investment by leveraging the knowledge and skills
of their employees, 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 with those used in Japan, Bob and Pat determined
that to successfully deliver TWI they would recreate the materials
trainers would need just as they were delivered during WWII and
in Japan after the war. Their initial work is documented in their
book The TWI Workbook: Essential Skills for Supervisors that
is a Shingo Research and Professional Publication Prize Recipient
for 2007.
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Steve Grossman
TWI Director - sgrossman@twi-institute.org
Steve has spent his professional career helping people improve
themselves, what they do and how they do it. So, joining the TWI
Institute was clearly an extension of this work.
Through December 2008 he was the chief operating officer at Hezel
Associates, responsible for development and management of educational
evaluation projects. As a fulltime consultant Dr. Grossman maintained
his connection to the technical workplace as principal investigator,
for the National Science Foundation, in an evaluation of the implementation
of Problem Based Case Learning in community colleges.
At the time of his retirement from public education in 2004, he
was the Assistant Superintendent for Instruction at Onondaga - Cortland
- Madison BOCES (a large educational service agency in Central New
York). His oversight responsibilities included career and technical
education, and adult and continuing education. In addition, Dr.
Grossman has been an adjunct professor at the State University of
New York at Oswego in the Department of Vocational Teacher Preparation
(VTP). As a vocational and technical education specialist, Dr. Grossman
worked to provide programs to empower skilled workers, in and out
of the workplace, with improved skills for productivity. Steve is
looking forward to continuing that important work as an organizer
and advocate for TWI. He believes in the promise of TWI for workers
and their employers.
Dr. Grossman earned his Doctorate in Educational Administration
from Syracuse University in 1986.
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 Lynne
Harding
TWI Program Administrator - lharding@twi-institute.org
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 Susan
Kuhns
TWI Director of Marketing and Communications - skuhns@twi-institute.org
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 Clara
Scherfner
TWI Finance Administrator - cscherfner@twi-institute.org
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Patrick Graupp
Senior Master Trainer
(JI, JR, JM, JS, PS)
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 Patrick 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 and which he described 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 in Japan
while training two other TWI Master Trainers (trainer of trainers)
like himself. TWI is now readily available nationally and in Spanish
from the TWI Institute.
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Richard Abercrombie
Master Trainer
(JI, JR, JM, JS)
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 assisted
key Boeing suppliers, both domestic and international, with beginning
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.
Since retiring from the Boeing Company in 2000, Richard has continued
to consult independently as President of Lean Promotions. Recognizing
that TWI is one of the fundamentals supporting the Toyota Production
System, Richard was trained and certified by the TWI Institute and
has since delivered the TWI supervisor programs to clients in manufacturing,
aerospace, steel, food, banking, construction, and healthcare industries.
Richard has a contractual relationship with the TWI Institute and
is collaborating with them as their TWI program expands. Now a Master
Trainer, Richard conducts the 10-hour “J” training and
train-the-trainer sessions for the TWI Institute in addition to
being an independent lean consultant.
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Mike Braml
Master Trainer
(JI, JR, JM)
Mike has more than 30 years of manufacturing and service industry
experience. Significant background in manufacturing management and
continuous improvement efforts has enabled Mike to help diverse
enterprises gain competitive advantage and position themselves for
robust futures. Broad continuous improvement experience including
lean, six sigma, and TOC implementations, coupled with being a certified
TWI instructor to dozens of companies.
Recently Mike has taken TWI outside of manufacturing, and applied
the concepts to service and public institutions with significant
success. Mike has delivered TWI within public institutions including
public schools, county worker environments, medical centers, and
service organizations. Mike is engaged in becoming a Master Trainer
for TWI, and hopes 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 a MBA from Kennedy Western University. Mike has been
certified in Production and Inventory Management through APICS,
and has been 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, and more recently
assisted hundreds of companies make significant continuous improvement
gains.
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 Roger
Bilas
Master Trainer
(JI)
Roger has over 25 years experience leading teams and organizations
in both manufacturing and the service sectors. His experience includes
frontline supervision, engineering and maintenance management to
director of manufacturing for a multi-plant operation. He has led
or facilitated numerous continuous improvement efforts using lean
principles, six sigma, total quality management and other improvement
methodologies. Roger has found the TWI programs of Job Instruction,
Job Relations, Job Safety and Job Methods Improvement to be the
“missing link” for implementing and sustaining the improvements
generated by a lean strategy.
He has led dozens of workshops in a variety of settings –
manufacturing (assembly, continuous processing, and batch processing),
services, and administration with excellent results on integrating
the use of TWI with other improvement methodologies to generate
sustainable bottom line improvement in organizations. Roger is a
certified trainer for all four of the above 10-hour TWI programs.
He is also a certified TWI Institute JI Master Trainer with plans
for him to continue down this path with JR and JM.
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 David
Palazzoli
Master Trainer
(JR)
David has diversified industry experience having worked in the
Healthcare Facilities Engineering Management, Laboratory Analysis,
Manufacturing, Metal Finishing and Transportation for over 30 years
before joining the Mohawk Valley Applied Technology Center (MVATC)
as a Process Engineer and Analyst for this NIST MEP Center in Utica,
NY where he was responsible for large-scale savings programs in
waste reduction, waste water treatment, recycling and energy management.
Dave’s interest in employee safety led him to expand his consulting
into the Environment, Health, and Safety field including regulatory
compliance issues and he is now trained as an “Authorized
OSHA Outreach Trainer” to document, trains trainers and conduct
OSHA related information programs. Dave has been an active TWI Trainer
in JI, JM, and JR since 2002 soon delivered several JR classes for
manufacturers for MVATC He has also delivered numerous JR, JI and
JM classes for a wide variety of manufacturers throughout the US
for the TWI Institute before completed his training to become a
TWI Institute JR Master Trainer. Dave became one of the first Job
Safety (JS) trainers when this program was first introduced in 2008
because of this programs focus on safety incident prevention that
he delivers in addition to the OSHA training.
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