Word: plants
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...envied Japanese production system is based not just on high-tech robotics but also on sweetspeak. An employee is a "team member." A foreman is a "group leader." Teams in the plant consist of six to eight team members who rotate jobs, with each team headed by an hourly team leader. Three to five teams are led by a salaried group leader. They are to work together in an atmosphere of "mutual trust...
While the NUMMI plant is considered better than some Japanese factories in Japan, it is still less efficient than Toyota City. The team leaders who were sent to Japan took one look at the "young wiry kids" working at 350 m.p.h. on the line and said...
...NUMMI the Japanese do not come to work late and will stay past quitting time unquestioningly if there is a job left undone. But they have "loosened up," says assistant plant manager Jesse Wingard. "You can get them to break for a cup of coffee, and there's a lot of joking on the line." Furuta's successor, "T.J." Obara, thinks his compatriots have learned something from the Americans. "It is more cheerful here than in Japan," says he. "It's phenomenal." Executive vice president Osamu Kimura feels this is a valuable lesson. "Current way is not good...
Most of the Japanese at the plant operate in determined and effective, if imperfect, English. And they get around. Kimura, when he has the chance, "goes around landscape" with his family a lot. The popular spots are Napa Valley, Monterey, Carmel, Arizona's Grand Canyon and Reno. But for the Japanese, nothing vies with golf. In California, with greens fees for 18 holes less than half what they are in Japan, and good golf equipment a fraction of the price there, everybody is playing the game...
...been immense. NUMMI's influence on the auto industry has been more limited. It is not yet a profitable business, at least partly because of competitive tension between GM and Toyota at the corporate level. Although GM has sent thousands of visitors through NUMMI, the reactions to it "vary plant by plant," according to GM's highest-ranking executive at NUMMI, John Arle. "GM is a big ship to turn around...