141: Jim Huntzinger
Listen to full episode:
Joe Krebs speaks with Jim Huntzinger about how the origin of behavioral patterns and the history of Kata and TWI. Jim is also the organizer of the KataCon, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2024.
Joe has a book “Agile Kata” in the making, if you like to be the first to know when it launches, please visit www.agilekatabook.com.
Transcript:
Agile F M radio for the agile community.
[00:00:05] Joe Krebs: Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Agile FM. I'm here today with Jim Huntzinger, who is speaking with me about behavioral patterns. We'll talk a little about the history of Kata. This is the Agile Kata series on Agile FM. So my goal is to bring you people closer from the Kata community to the Agile community and build bridges.
So Jim is here with me today. Welcome to the show.
[00:00:35] Jim Huntzinger: Yeah. Thank you, Joe. It's great to be here with you.
[00:00:37] Joe Krebs: Yeah, and Jim, you are with the Lean Frontiers and as the name indicates, Frontier on many things including the KataCon conference, or actually there's different kind of names, but it emerged.
And for all the listeners here on Agile FM who have been going to Agile conferences for a long time, and they are hearing possibly about Kata the very first time they would be surprised that this is going into the 10th year, this conference, the KataCon this year in 2024, and it's going to be in Indiana,
[00:01:12] Jim Huntzinger: Indianapolis, you have caught a content in Indianapolis.
So yeah, part of will be celebrating I guess the 10th birthday for it at the conference.
[00:01:19] Joe Krebs: That is awesome. 10 years in the making, obviously, we want to go down memory lane a little bit together. Today there was obviously a starting point where you got exposed into Kata and scientific thinking.
And I would like to go back, like, how did this all start for you? And for all the listeners here, what is an interesting piece of information is there is A person out there who started it like way, way back, 1890s, even. So, let's go
[00:01:50] Jim Huntzinger: 1830s around the
[00:01:52] Joe Krebs: 1830s,
Jim, how did this all start for you?
[00:01:57] Jim Huntzinger: Yeah. So, so yeah, I'll tell a little bit about, I'll tell my background, which a little bit of my history, which will bring in some of the. Older history that correlates and also a lot with TWI training within industry, which correlates as well too, and that'll actually come together on kind of that scientific thinking and scientific behavior.
So anyway, when I came out of school, I my first job out of school was with a company that was a Toyota group company. That was in the process of transplanting in North America to support the Toyota plants. At that time there was the Toyota in Canada, the NUMMI plant, the joint venture with General Motors in California, and the Georgetown plant, which wasn't even started yet.
It was, They were still setting it up at the time I started. And I went to work for Aisin, and they were a Toyota group company. And it's obviously a supplier into the transplanting here to supply into those plants. So, you know, part of my responsibility, I was a manufacturing engineer was helping ramp up the manufacturing processes.
As we as we ramped up the plant and when I got there, my half the plant wasn't even built yet. So I was there through the actual construction of half the plant and we were doing great components drums, rotors brake boosters, oil pumps, water pumps on my part of the plant. So I went to Japan for nine weeks to train on the processes we had, the products.
I went to different Aisin plants. where the products were made Toyota plant and also get training on the Toyota production system, which at that time didn't really have any meaning to me, you know, but we learned it. So came back and went through that ramp up process. To do that. So from there I left because I want to get more involved in the upfront process development because that was done by the Japanese of engineers, of course.
So I moved to Wisconsin and took a job with Briggs and Stratton, who at that time, this is in 1990, were one of the first companies to really do some of the this lean stuff, trying to physically do it. So I was brought in here because supposedly I knew something about TPS, you know, haven't worked for Aisin.
But the nice thing about that is basically we had a sandbox to play in. The guy I worked for said go find something you're interested in. Obviously it's beneficial to the company and go do it. So we were, you know, implementing flow production at a relatively now, even looking back now, 30 years, 30 plus years at a very rampant rate across the plant.
So we did machining. And assembly of small engines for Briggs and Stratton. Now, the nice thing with me working for Aisin, even though it was a Toyota group company had TPS in it versus Toyota. Obviously Toyota is the practitioner of TPS, but their product is a great big, huge automobile. So you don't physically get all those correlations as easily since it's this big product versus when I worked for Aisin who made components.
So the components correlated to the components we made at Briggs of doing one piece flow. So we were doing that, putting in standard work. We got involved with the Shingijutsu out of Japan. And we were doing, we internalized our own Kaizen workshops to do all that, implementing this. So in the course of doing that we changed the plan around entirely and actually a very rapid time all considering.
And even to this day, let's go back 30 years ago, the basic designs of the cells, you know, one of these slow cells were actually. Pretty good. The things and attributes we did were very much one piece flow. So partially correlating it to Kata you know, one thing with the improvement Kata is you need to understand your direction or the challenge.
Well, essentially our challenge back then was One piece flow, everything we did, we wanted to achieve one piece flow. And in that we had machines, obviously mostly machining the, actually some of the grinders I worked with when I got the manuals to them, the date on the manuals was prior to the U S being bombed at Pearl Harbor.
So we had machine tools of that old up to an old, every place in between, you know, newer CNC equipment. So we're trying to put all this into true one piece flow. Now, we did that successfully, but the problem is we couldn't get the consistency that I had seen at Aisin of the consistency of output, consistency to tactile.
And I, I didn't really know why, but I knew, you know, working for, you know, Japanese company, actually even some of the managers and engineers here, 37 years later, I still stay in contact with. Japanese are humans like everybody else. I knew they had to have some thing, whatever this thing was. That they were using that we just didn't know about and all that.
So over the course of time, I ended up a number of years later, writing a couple books were published, one by Jeff Liker and one by Masaaki Imai. Jeff Liker's, I think, first book Becoming Lean and the one by Misaaki Imai, Gemba Kaizen, around 1997. And I read Liker's book and in it, it mentions this thing called TWI, Training Within Industry, in about a sentence or two.
And I thought, what, and World War II program. I thought, what the heck does some World War II program have to do with the Toyota production system? Well, that's interesting, move on. The, about two months later, I miss, Imai's book, it has a couple pages discussing training with industries. And I just, I've got to find out what the heck some World War II program has to do with the Toyota production system.
So I started diving into it. Just to jump forward a few years, it took me a while to dig. I was calling Washington, D. C., the archives, just trying to gather up information. And eventually, finding that the Depository Libraries of the United States was supposed to have information on it in the Milwaukee Public Library I finally found some information that there was a report done, which I was able to, in the library alone, to get this 300 page TWI, post World War II, written 1945 report.
Got it, went to Kinko's, made copies of it, and then sat on it because I thought, I don't know how excited I am to read a 300 page government report. But eventually I went through all the work to get it. So I eventually pulled down and read it and started reading it. And I couldn't believe what I was reading.
What I was reading through the report was it was correlating some of the things I had learned, you know, somewhat indirectly at Aisin. And also when we use the Shingijutsu group, some of the verbiage, it gave me the link to the manuals they use during the war. So I was able to start getting those through a library loan.
And as I got the first one, the job methods. One is about improvement and read it. The language verbatim in that manual from 1943 was verbatim. What we had learned with like in Shingijutsu and some of that stuff. But now I understood the source. I understand what it's doing. So that kind of started this, the TWI.
Now that now the importance of this TWI is if you look at all the main programs, job instruction is about training. Job methods is about improvement and job relations is about leadership and people problems. All of them used. I have some of the cards here. All of them use a the four step four step methodology based on the scientific method.
Now the history with TWI because I got into that is it goes back to at least 1830. So a German philosopher and educator named Johann Harbert had developed a five step program to educate kids. Pedagogy. Five step method. In the 1830s. So in Europe, there are people, they called him herbations.
So European herbations that followed his philosophy American herbations that did too. And one of them was a guy by the name of Charles Allen, Charles Skipper Allen. And I, and he was one and he took Harbert's five step methodology and he put it into a four step method, methodology that he called job instruction.
And he wrote a book. He wrote a book on it. Around 1918. It's like a 500 page book just on the four step method. It's an amazing book. So in depth, but basically that job instruction when we get when the U. S. Got into World War Two, the guys they put in charge of the T. W. I. Program 3 of the four that were in charge of it.
One had worked for Alan directly. The other two have been trained by so they pulled that job instruction forward. Yeah. And that became TWI job instruction and eventually pulling from some other, I won't go through all that history job methods, which is I industrial engineering techniques. That really has their base in the Gilbreth, some of the pioneers in industrial engineering and a guy named Alan Mogenson put that into place.
So that was the instructing, the improvement, and then eventually job relations was leadership. So that comes into Toyota post World War II in the early 1950s, as Ono had struggled implementing flow production, trying to emulate the Ford motor company. One piece flow, as we call it today. And he'd struggled with it in their machine shop for about eight years.
When the TWI program came in during the post war occupation through their training department, Ohno grabbed onto that. J I all three of them, J I J M and J R. And that's when he started succeeding. Yeah. So see implementing flow production, trying to emulate early Ford motor company. Yeah. So it's all based on a scientific method.
[00:11:12] Joe Krebs: Absolutely. And this is, I think this is where we're, we want to go with it. It's the second, this is a great that you're going back in time because I think this is important for everybody to see that this is not like the latest, greatest trend that just emerged just recently. And we'll you were talking about Kata, you know, in a brand new way this has been a well established thinking patterns.
Now just to go quickly back to this Johan n Harbart he if I understand this, right, he applied this in a five steps. But that was more on the educational level. He's redesigned instruction for kids in schools, I would assume, and colleges. And so,
[00:11:50] Jim Huntzinger: Yeah. So it's for educating kids pedagogy type of thing, although it's very much on.
On practicing, which again correlates to what Charles Alan did. He Charles Allen was actually vocational trainer. That's why he was a probation and took that and put it into, because he was trying to train people, especially in shipbuilding on, in, in the, you know, night 1890s, 19. Early 1900s and all that.
So he was trying to train people. So it was a very pragmatic way to, to educate children by practice. And he put that into, in a way, educating, training people in vocational training.
[00:12:26] Joe Krebs: Yeah. So as a community of Kata thinking, we could say we're speeding things up quite a bit now. Like there were 1830s, 1890s, 1900s 20th century, right?
But now things get really into motion and we, you mentioned some of those books the, we're increasing the rate of publications, I think that's what's what has been seen. So I think. Scientific thinking applied outside of education possibly even outside of lean manufacturing becomes really interesting.
And that's why we have you on the, in the Agile Kata series, right? How can these things possibly influence things outside of lean manufacturing?
[00:13:02] Jim Huntzinger: And I want to, and I'll bring this to Toyota. So, the TWI stuff, as I researched, it was the late 1990s. And very early 2000s. So Mike publishes Toyota Kata in 2009.
So, so I got that and read it. And Mike's always been a person that just does a good job of taking things, parsing them down and articulating them very succinctly. Mike's always been very good at that. So I read Toyota Kata and I'm going, what I'm reading through there, I love because this is exactly the behavioral patterns we were doing back in my days.
When we were implementing it, Briggs and Stratton. Now we weren't doing it near to the prescriptive level, near to the discipline level, near to any of that, that Mike was doing, but the fundamental patterns. We were doing like for example, like I said, our challenge was one piece flow. We would have to go out and establish the current condition.
We didn't use that terminology, the current condition, the machines or the processes as they were, and then we'd have a what our target condition was, how do we put those into one piece flow and we would go through iterative steps. We were practicing scientific method is mainly because we didn't have a choice.
We weren't quite sure what we were doing. So we had to go through these iterative steps to figure it out. So experimentation, like Mike says, and my favorite diagram he has in Toyota Kata, he has the one where, you know, on each end, he has the current condition and a target condition. Then kind of in between them is this unclear territory.
And that's why I related to it so much. That's exactly what we were doing when we were doing that lean thinking what now all the, you know, there's a few books but not much. There was no internet. So we had literally do this, learn by doing, which actually came from TWI actually learn by doing. So we were doing it through iterative steps, this unclear territory to get it.
So that's why the Toyota kind of related to me. And then it gave a pattern, a better, more prescriptive pattern. And also too, when Mike was researching that, as he looked at these different companies, practicing it, none of them did it exactly alike. They had their own way. But of course, again, that's what Mike's good.
He had to put it into something a little more prescriptive in order to articulate it back out to everybody, so people could grasp it, you could practice it, people could learn it. Right. And ultimately it is, and that's why the book, I have it here. Sylvain Landry's book bringing scientific to life is so important because that's really, that's what TWI is practicing scientific behavioral patterns, Kata goes through that practicing scientific behavioral patterns so that.You don’t think your way through practice, you practice your way to thinking.. And that's what these are about. And that's why again, Toyota Kata is. So important about practicing so you get in that pattern, it just becomes natural and instinctive.
[00:15:42] Joe Krebs: Oh, yes. And the terminology as you said, you reused other terms, right? I think when people are looking at these behavioral patterns, they're realizing, Oh, these are things I have done in a very similar way.
And that's good. Right. And you might have used different terminology. I think the benefit of using a consistent terminology within an organization, let's say. It's obviously we all know what, where we are in terms of the journey, but that might change over time. Right? So I think as long as the pattern stays the same, the behavioral patterns.
Yeah, one thing with that, I'd like to say over the years is I'll use this and this illustrates the importance of practice and continuing practice. So I say if if you're not using Kata or even TWI the same in three months, that's a problem. Because you need to practice the pattern, practice the behavior.
But the other part of that is, if you're using if you're using Kata or TWI the same in three years, that's a problem. Because you should be learning it, so it becomes instinctive, so you do expand out your ability to use it. And it can be used, I realize, anywhere there's people and processes. You can use it.
It doesn't have to be in manufacturing. It could be in healthcare. People are successfully using healthcare. In some of the insurance companies, I know people are using these. Anywhere there's people and processes, it's a, it helps you to be more successful because you're using that pattern, those behavioral patterns of scientific thinking.
Yeah. To solve problems and move to a better level. Yeah.
Oh, absolutely. Your KataCon conference, just to come back to that for one more moment, it's like, I think it's a representation of exactly what you just said. It's like who comes to these conferences, right? It's a broad mix of people. Yes.
[00:17:25] Jim Huntzinger: Yeah. Yes. Broad mix of people out of different industries, broad mix of people at different levels along their journey.
[00:17:33] Joe Krebs: Yeah. And you're all running as part of these conferences or you have ran these kind of onsite, but also workshops in parallel to these conferences, right? But they are more focused on the lean manufacturing side, if I'm not mistaken, right?
But that is very hands on practical skills. Yeah,
[00:17:49] Jim Huntzinger: Very hands on. In the case, the comp, so the conference we try, what we do is try to bring together the community. So we, with Lean Frontiers, I guess we like to say we like to build communities within the lean community. So, you know, we've had a lean accounting communities, of course, the Kata community with KataCon, TWI community, product, you know, lean product development, so communities within there.
And it's a chance what we want to do is bring together thought leaders, practitioners, sometimes academics, people to come in and just share what they're doing and learning with each other within that community. With our intent is hopefully people make connections and get to know each other. So we don't, we just don't want them there together.
You know, the two days or three days of the conference, we like to make them good networking connections. So as they go out the other 300 and some days out of the year they talk with each other. They communicate, they, they help, they share, try to bring what's going on together. So people go out and do good things with it and hopefully come back a year later.
Continue to share what they've learned over the last year. Yeah.
[00:18:47] Joe Krebs: And Jim how, like for somebody who is like maybe in the agile community right now, it says, this sounds very interesting. I'm listening to the Kata series. I'm starting to maybe read one of the books you you mentioned you on this podcast, how.
What's the speaking situation? Like, who's speaking? What's the format of this conference? Because the scientific thinking is you know, is obviously in the forefront of that and the behavioral patterns you're pointing out. But what's the format? Or do people have to envision this conference to look like it's two days, right?
[00:19:17] Jim Huntzinger: So what we do with the KataCon, actually, we actually run the KataSummit, KataCon same thing. And the TWI Summit, we run them concurrently. Because there's obviously, just because of the deliberate practice and scientific, there's so much correlation. But we always like to say, if people want to come and all they want to do is Kata, we got them covered.
All they want to do is TWI, got you covered. If they want to mix it up, however much they want, they can do that. But we have, Keynotes and our keynotes are usually shorter. Try to make them just the pace, you know, like shorter 15 or 20 minute keynotes we have going on. We have breakout sessions where some are by practitioners.
So you're learning what people are doing in companies, some by some thought leaders where they could expand a little bit more. A lot of times they're usually working with companies about what they're doing. We have some deep dive sessions where they're even a little bit longer. They're almost like a, kind of a mini sub workshop where people can go in and practice, you know, some of the aspects a little bit more.
We actually have workshops. We have like a level set, a TWI level set and a kata, like their half day kata level set. So if you're kind of new, you could come in and kind of get up to a baseline. So you can, that's pre summit. So you can get more out of the summit, but we have some workshops and then even.
Post summit. We have a Kata dojo workshop by Tilo Schwartz, who him with just another good book, giving wings to your team and all that. And we also do the 10 hour session so that TWI was trained actually the same format. It was used during the war, these 10 hour sessions. So there's five two hour sessions.
So we run those think we're running for one for job instruction and job relations post summit and also one for Toyota Kata. Where they go through most of the improvement kata, but some on the coaching kata also a 10 hour training so people could come out and get, you know, like a certification on they can go, you know, know how to go practice and those are really practice based kind of workshops, a 10 hour training.
[00:21:14] Joe Krebs: And I think that's also important, right? Because it is about practicing scientific thinking. So the practice piece needs to come in. I think for what was pretty awesome in this episode, I want to thank you for that is your background and how you know, take us on this journey of how this all started, but also how deeply rooted it is in many things we do as humans in various different kinds of industries.
And even though it's only a small piece of history of what we just covered. The 10 years of KataCon is significant. It's a huge accomplishment. I want to thank you for putting this out there and putting your energy into organize something like this as an a past conference organizer myself. I know how much work that is.
[00:21:58] Jim Huntzinger: One of the thing I might touch on because this is also about practicing is we have these are outside of that. the summit. But we have a couple workshops, one called skill point, one called skills lab where you go practice, you go learn TWI and also Toyota Kata. But it's actually on a full scale simulator.
So it's a life size line. Now, the reason I'm bringing that up is you learn these skills because these are about skills. you skill of the Toyota Kata, the skill of improvement, Kata skill of the coaching kata. Same thing with TWI, but it's always interesting when we run those workshops we used have people from different companies come in and literally by the end of day one, and certainly by the day two there, these three day workshops, you would think these people had worked together for 10 years.
Even though for different industries, different companies, and that's not something we're directly trying to do. So the whole working together as a team and all that, that when you practice these things together, by default, you'll reap that benefit of people understanding each other, people working collaborative together.
So it's been fascinating to watch those. Workshops and watch that just spontaneously happen that these people look, I said, they look like they've been working together for 10 years and just met less than 24 hours before.
[00:23:12] Joe Krebs: Yeah, it's amazing. Great bonding, right? If you have a shared goal and you work as a team and you collaborate and you have the same language and can navigate.
That's fantastic. Jim, I want to thank you. On the show page people will find a way of finding the conference for sure. They can also just Google KataCon and and get in touch and get their tickets and meet you in April in 2024 in Indianapolis. Thank you, Jim.
[00:23:39] Jim Huntzinger: Yeah. Indianapolis.
Thank you so much, Joe. Yeah. Looking forward to it and thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.
