Word: saturns
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...union are already at odds because of company plans to close 21 plants. Last week 2,300 GM workers struck a parts plant in Lordstown, Ohio, over job security. The action halted the assembly line for the much touted Saturn, which depends on a steady flow of auto components to meet its Japanese-inspired "just in time" production system...
...most of its bumpy, 10-year history, General Motors' Saturn project was derided by auto-industry critics as a $5 billion ugly duckling -- an experimental, money-losing attempt to match the value and quality of import models. To ensure customer satisfaction, Saturn built cars at its all-new plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., with the crawly pace of a craft shop. It also gained something of a quirky reputation for recalling them at the tiniest hitch...
...Saturn's diligence has finally paid off handsomely with a third-place finish in J.D. Power's highly regarded annual survey of car customer satisfaction. Not only was that the highest ranking achieved by any U.S. make in the respected survey, but at an average price of $12,500, Saturn was alone among luxury favorites such as Lexus, Infiniti and Acura, all with price tags three times as high...
Explaining Blue Man Group is no easy task. Take the Blue Men themselves. They are expressionless and robotic, yet oddly childlike and endlessly creative: a tripartite Buster Keaton, dropped in from Saturn. Some of the bits are overtly satirical (a dead fish on a canvas is the subject for a high-toned art critique, which scrolls by on an electronic message board). Others are raucously playful. One of the Blues tosses what appears to be marshmallows across the stage to a comrade, who catches them with his mouth and stuffs them inside like a huge wad of bubble...
...laboratory of ideas for reinventing itself is its Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn. But in attempting to do everything differently, Saturn's craftsmanlike attention to detail and quality is causing delays in turning out the cars. A year after the assembly lines began rolling, current production is less than 100,000 units a year, far from the estimated break-even point of 250,000, costing the division as much as $2 billion annually...