CRC Press Building a Global Learning Organization: Using TWI to Succeed with Strategic Workforce Expansion in the LEGO Group

Building a Global Learning Organization: Using TWI to Succeed with Strategic Workforce Expansion in the LEGO Group describes how a multinational company developed a global structure for learning based on the TWI (Training Within Industry) program to create and sustain standardized work across multiple language and cultural platforms. In this book, Shingo Prize-winning author Patrick Graupp collaborates with two practitioners who performed the planning and implementation of the LEGO Group‘s worldwide Learning Organization.The book outlines the organizational and planning models used by the LEGO Group to create the internal ability to give and receive tacit skills and knowledge. Describing how and why TWI is used as the foundation for success in knowledge transfer across diverse languages and cultures, it provides step-by-step guidance on how to establish a solid organizational foundation for your own Learning Organization.Providing expert insight into the work of culture change, the book explains how to work with people to create motivation for moving to a new system of learning. It details the critical elements that made the implementation at the LEGO Group a success, identifies the stumbling blocks they encountered along the way, and explains how they were overcome. Case studies describe in detail what these efforts looked and felt like in actual application.The TWI program has long been recognized for its ability to generate results. After reading this book, you will gain valuable insight into how your organization whether large or small, national or international can integrate this timeless tool into your operating structure and your daily culture. Review LEGO has been a household name all of my life and I was aware that they had a strong people-focused culture and adopted Lean methods. This book, written with LEGO insiders, is a stunning example of the discipline and commitment needed to develop people as masters of their crafts through the only way people learn―repetitive, deliberate practice.―Jeffrey K. Liker, Professor, University of Michigan; and Shingo Prize-winning author of The Toyota WayFew books, if any in the Lean area since the NUMMI era, have gone into such depth on what it takes to integrate and unify across cultures. The book will become a standard guide not only to TWI implementation, but to the wider challenge of cross-functional and cross-cultural integration. ―John Bicheno, Founder of MSc in Lean Enterprise at The University of Buckingham While TWI has made a significant comeback in recent years as the underpinning of the Toyota Production System’s foundation for continuous improvement and standard work, the ability to make it an integrated and sustainable system of developing people with a highly productive capability to solve problems while continually learning has remained elusive to most organizations. The book describes in detail how LEGO achieve this culture through a strategic and deliberate plan to develop and deploy a global system of organizational training using TWI as its foundation. ―Jim Huntzinger, President/Founder, Lean Frontiers