Word: saturn
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...heart of the issue is consumer trust, which the Japanese have deservedly won and GM now has an opportunity to win back. Inspired by Saturn, GM may be able to turn the once derogatory epithet "domestic" into a true competitive advantage. "The Japanese have been worried about this for some time. It scares the liver out of them," says David Cole, director of the Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation at the University of Michigan...
...Saturn succeeds, then the message to the rest of American industry will be unambiguous. The American work force, often and unfairly maligned as the cause of U.S. competitive woes over the past two decades, can compete with anyone if managed intelligently. GM's smaller U.S. rivals have already adopted some of the progressive techniques employed at Saturn. Ford, which is using Japanese-style team systems at many of its plants, has already improved so much that its efficiency matches that of the average Japanese plant in Japan. Chrysler's best factory, in Sterling Heights, Mich., is nearly as efficient...
...commitment to changes as bold as Saturn's represents a major turnaround in the thinking of corporate America. A report issued last year by the Council on Competitiveness, a group of scholars and industrialists, concluded that U.S. industry had declined in the past two decades because "top U.S. managers , began to focus on marketing and finance at the expense of manufacturing and, as a result, failed to manage the investments in worker skills, plant and equipment necessary for a strong manufacturing capability." The council noted that Japanese manufacturers "spend two-thirds of their R. and D. budgets on process innovations...
...other words, corporate America seems to be recognizing that making the product right is as important as dreaming it up and selling it. "People should look at Saturn as a potential watershed," says the University of Michigan's Cole. "This is not just a bunch of guys using some new machinery on the plant floor. It's really an entirely new vision of the system." If the vision is clear and true, the 1990s could bring a vigorous comeback for American industry...
...automaking in the U.S., just head south from Detroit on Interstate 75. As it courses through Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, I-75 follows a corridor that has served as fertile ground for so-called greenfield factories, built from scratch for high productivity. This is where GM put its new Saturn plant, but most of the new factories along I-75 are Japanese transplants...