TWI Pocket Card App - Now Available on Android!

The TWI Pocket card app is now available for android devices! 

http://www.amazon.com/NoCo-Systems-TWI-Pocket-Cards/dp/B00E0LJCS6/ref

and for those of you on Apple devices here is your link:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twi-training-pocket-cards/id666489733?ls=1&mt=8

I trialed the app for Android on my HTC Desire, running Android 2.3.3. Works beautifully! Mark and Stuart Warren have put together a nice app that serves as that handy reminder to "pull out the card" and use it. Even better, for those of you that are comparing notes: Mark has incorporated some of the best practices that were developed beyond the 1944 program that is commonly used today. And in a great example of lean behavioral thinking, this service will increase the probability of TWI being successfully used in your organization. Why? I've lost my cards before, and when things are out of sight, they quickly become out of mind. When presented with challenges, it is too easy to fall into the trap of clouded thinking. Having the cards available and ready to use will help me avoid that. I'm less likely to use my phone because of the value of the information and connectivity that my smartphone provides, thereby ensuring that I'm more apt to use my pocket cards.

Here is an excerpt from Mark on an online TWI Forum about why he and Stuart developed the app:

"The experiments for putting the pocket cards on smart phones began about three years ago, long before I had one. I also resisted adopting…even carrying the very nice laminated TWI pocket cards that Roger Bilas made me in the same case with my iPad. Yes, I like the physical cards. I could not ignore how easily people misplaced their physical cards in their early days of practicing any of the programs."

"While I am trying to preserve the original TWI materials, I’m also researching on the outcomes of all sorts of variations to the original programs. what worked, what didn’t, and why. Much of this is driven from a challenge by John Shook many years ago (he was Toyota’s first American employee and the one that first trained people in JI in the US in the 1980s). The challenge was: “What was different about how Taiichi Ohno used the TWI programs from the thousands of other companies? Why are they so successful?” The answer, as I now understand it, lies not in adhering exactly to the 1944 version of the TWI program. We miss the most valuable part of the program if we get blinded to using JI as just a training tool; or JR just as a tool for better relations; or JM as just an improvement program (kaizens)… I don’t even think Ohno’s leap was deliberate. They were in a firefighting mode for so long and using the programs, that the practice exercises became habits. Mike Rother has written about this in “Toyota Kata”. The pocket cards are checklists…to help us follow a thinking pattern."

"Delivery of the 10-hour Sessions were seen by the TWI Directors as ‘basic training’, the beginning point, not a completion of learning. Anything I can do to help people use checklists (life hacks) to master the programs I see as a positive improvement. For me it is all about helping people master the skills…it must be simple and useful."

Download and use it!

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