TWI Addresses Shortage of Skilled Healthcare Staff

“The TWI method won WWII by rapidly training unskilled workers to produce materials and supplies needed for the war effort. We’re in a war now and we can use those same methods to up-skill and re-skill volunteers and recalled healthcare staff returning from retirement, along with re-training factory workers who must convert from familiar tasks to new work for medical materials.”
─ Scott Curtis, President & CEO TWI Institute

President Donald Trump triggers the Defense Production Act. The New York Times says that hospitals are struggling to prepare for the surge of COVID-19 patients. This is what is happening now and the TWI Institute, the global leader in TWI training and headquartered in Syracuse, New York, declares that it is time to use what we learned in WWII to rapidly “train up” more people who can care safely for the surging patient population, or in manufacturing facilities that are being repurposed for making medical materials and supplies like respirators and sanitizing liquids.

TWI Institute uses the authentic TWI programs to train people to be more effective on the job. The cornerstone programs include Job Instruction, Job Methods, Job Relations and Job Safety. Clients of TWI Institute include Alcon, Baptist Memorial Health, Boeing, BMW, Coca-Cola, Cummins, Detroit Veterans Administration Hospital, LEGO, and Merck, among many others.

As the healthcare and manufacturing communities search for answers to the shortage of people and materials, TWI training represents a solution for rapid skills building in critically important jobs and preventing the spread of infections by healthcare workers and to them. Through an existing and extensive network of trainers, the TWI Institute can mobilize the solution at significant scale.

The TWI Institute was founded in 2001 and is led by Scott Curtis, President and CEO, and Patrick Graupp, Vice
President and Senior Master Trainer and also a noted author on TWI training in manufacturing and healthcare.

TWI trained “Rosie the riveter” and has trained healthcare professionals on how to protect against infections and other risks. TWI originated in the United States early in World War II. Because the war effort required so much manpower in the European and Pacific theaters, the people who replaced workers in the manufacturing plants, including women who had never worked in factories or shipyards before, not only needed job training, but also a different approach to work in order to produce the amount of materials needed by the armed services. It had to happen fast, and it had to be right.

Eventually, America brought TWI to Japan after the war where it was embraced and used by Toyota to create its Toyota Production

System, commonly referred to as TPS, that is still used today.