Getting to Standard Work in Health Care

Patrick Graupp began his training career at the SANYO Electric Corporate Training Center in Kobe, 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 was transferred to a compact disc fabrication plant in Indiana, where he obtained manufacturing experience before returning to Japan to lead SANYO's global training effort. Graupp earned an MBA from Boston University during this time and was later promoted to the head of Human Resources for SANYO North America Corp. in San Diego, California, where he settled.

Graupp delivered a pilot project in 2001 to reintroduce TWI in the United States. The positive results encouraged him to leave SANYO in 2002 to deliver the TWI program on a wider scale throughout the United States in the same manner as he had been taught in Japan. He described this in his book The TWI Workbook: Essential Skills for Supervisors, a Shingo Research and Professional Publication Prize recipient for 2007. With colleagues in Syracuse, NY he helped found the TWI Institute which has developed over 3,000 certified trainers who teach TWI on six continents in over 30 countries in 18 languages. He is the author of numerous books on TWI including Creating an Effective Management System: Integrating Policy Deployment, TWI, and Kata which was published in 2020.

Martha Purrier is a registered nurse with over 30 years of experience in the health care setting. She earned a master's degree specializing in the clinical care of patients with cancer and in the training of nurses. During the past 20 years, she has worked at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, in a variety of positions: Oncology Clinical Nurse Specialist, Director of Inpatient Oncology and IV Services, Director of the Kaizen Promotion Office and Director of Nursing Services at Bailey-Boushay House. Virginia Mason adopted Lean as a management methodology in 2001, and Purrier was certified in Rapid Process Improvement Workshops in 2006. During her work in IV therapy, the team won the Mary McClinton Patient Safety award for the application of Lean methods, which produced increased safety for patients receiving central lines. In 2008, Purrier was appointed to the Kaizen Fellowship Program. She is a certified instructor of the TWI Job Instruction program and has spoken internationally on the application of TWI and Lean to health care.