Word: plantes
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Picture a Toyota engineer in a Stetson, munching on a corn dog, and you'll get a sense of how the company sees its future. Toyota is constructing its sixth North American assembly plant, in the heart of truck country just outside San Antonio, Texas, aiming to build the next generation of its full-size Tundra pickup there and--if all goes as planned--finally conquer the U.S. truck market. Achieving that feat would mark a milestone for Toyota in its quest to become the great American car company and would follow its conquest of virtually every other market segment...
...world, Toyota has had to abandon its distinctive one-on-one training methods, prompting questions about whether the company can maintain its vaunted production standards. In the old days, Japanese manufacturing gurus schooled in the legendary Toyota production system would move overseas and practically live in a new plant for a few years. Classroom training is now the rule. And for the first time, Toyota's U.S. plants--not factories in Japan--are acting as the "mother ships" for new factories. A Georgetown, Ky., plant shepherded a new truck plant in Mexico, and one in Indiana is taking charge...
Piece it together, and you'll get an idea of why Toyota is moving to Texas. The state anted up $133 million to lure the new state-of-the-art plant, which when it lights up late next year will feature a highly flexible system for producing eight different models on a single line. Toyota aims to produce 150,000 Tundras annually there, and analysts expect a second line eventually for other models. Says Rob Hinchliffe of UBS: "They're very methodical...
...when the cold war was at its height, flying saucers were flitting over suburban barbecues, and Americans were feeling, perhaps justifiably, a little paranoid. Among the first of these science-fiction creature features was The Thing, a real scarer in which a huge and extremely unpleasant plant lands in the Arctic, the point man, so to speak, of an invasion by other vainglorious veggies. "You mean we're dealing with a walking carrot?" asks an indignant reporter...
Compensation: Under threat of public foreclosure, make all the Final Clubs change their animal names into plant names. Or protozoa, but nothing as cool as archaebacteria. And force the Oak to rename itself the Blue-Footed Booby. Humiliation is the only thing that works on these kids...