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 of the pilot project 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. Working with the TWI Institute of Syracuse, New York, Graupp developed standardized training manuals and materials to train and certify trainers on how to deliver the TWI modules as was done by the TWI Service during WWII.

The TWI Institute has since trained hundreds of trainers across the United States and around the globe, which led to his follow-up book, Implementing TWI: Creating and Managing a Skills-Based Culture, which was published in October 2010.

Martha Purrier is a registered nurse with over 25 years of experience in the hospital 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 12 years, she has worked at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, as the director of Inpatient Oncology and IV Services. 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 currently works as the director of Virginia Mason's Kaizen Promotion Office and is applying TWI to healthcare instruction. She is a certified instructor of the TWI Job Instruction program.