Word: plante
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...knockout champion. What cannot be known for sure at this point is probably the most important single factor: Saturn's reliability. In that department, the company is taking no chances. Only 1,000 Saturns will be ready for sale this week, about half the number expected, because the plant has slowed down its production to iron out any initial bugs. "We've had to do some tweaking," a Saturn official explained. Once rolling, Saturn aims to boost production to 250,000 a year...
...philosophical nature of Japan's automaking edge was proved once and for all with the success of the first Honda plant in Marysville, Ohio, where American workers build Accords whose quality rivals or exceeds the same cars built in Japanese plants. Following the example of Toyota chairman Eiji Toyoda, Japanese companies in the 1960s and 1970s effectively reworked Henry Ford's theories, replacing his intensely hierarchical assembly-line system with a more flexible team-based arrangement. Japan's efforts have been fruitful. In the past decade the Japanese have built 11 plants in the U.S. and Canada with the capacity...
Saturn's best hope is that it represents a profound change in the way GM manages its people. But the difference is not technological. Saturn's cavernous, mile-long Tennessee factory is a medium-tech plant, as are many of the most efficient facilities in Japan. The core of Saturn's system is one of the most radical labor-management agreements ever developed in this country, one that involves the United Auto Workers in every aspect of the business. The executive suite in Spring Hill is shared by president LeFauve and U.A.W. coordinator Richard Hoalcraft, who often travel together...
Beyond sharing power at top levels, the labor agreement established some 165 work teams, which have been given more power than assembly-line workers anywhere else in GM or at any Japanese plant. They are allowed to interview and approve new hires for their teams (average size: 10 workers). They are given wide responsibility to decide how to run their own areas; when workers see a problem on the assembly line, they can pull on a blue handle and shut down the entire line. They are even given budget responsibility. One team in Saturn's final-assembly area voted...
...people skills are not Saturn's only strong point. Since they were outfitting a plant from the ground up, Saturn's team members incorporated an array of new equipment and techniques. Their aim was to achieve what the M.I.T. study dubbed "lean production," the Japanese system that uses "half the human effort in the factory, half the manufacturing space, half the investment in tools, half the engineering hours to develop a new product." At Saturn, team members rejected the traditional U.S. form of assembly line, where workers do two things at once -- toil and shuffle -- as they struggle to keep...