Word: tarrytowns
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Robert Votta North Tarrytown...
...same period a year earlier. Detroit continues to struggle with the dark reputation that it turns out cars inferior to those made by Japanese or West German manufacturers and that American workers are not sufficiently productive. But one Big Three plant belies such notoriety. The General Motors factory in Tarrytown, N.Y., one of the plants where the company assembles its hot-selling front-wheel-drive Chevrolet Citations, has earned the reputation of being perhaps the giant automaker's most efficient assembly facility. Tarrytown's current renown is more surprising because in the early 1970s the 55-year...
...turnaround at Tarrytown grew out of the realization by local management and union representatives that inefficiencies and industrial strife threatened the plant's continued operation. Automakers sometimes use forced plant closings caused by sluggish auto sales to unload a lemon facility. Ford, for example, decided two weeks ago to shut the gates of its huge Mahwah, N. J., plant largely because it had a poor quality record. After Tarrytown lost a truck production facility in 1971, bosses and workers became fearful for their jobs and got together to find better ways to build cars. At first hesitantly but later...
...conflict was sloppy work, rapidly rising dealer complaints, and an unprecedented number of disciplinary and dismissal notices. "Workers and bosses were constantly at each other's throats," recalls Gus Beirne, then general superintendent of the plant. Agrees Larry Sheridan, the former United Auto Workers shop chairman at Tarrytown: "It sure as hell was a battleground...
...cost savings produced by simply sharing information with the shop floor encouraged Tarrytown's executives to move further. In 1972, the plant's supervisors began holding regular meetings with workers on company time to discuss worker complaints and ideas for boosting efficiency. In order to turn the gripe sessions into something more substantive, both sides agreed to bring in an outside consultant to organize worker-participation projects. They chose Sydney Rubinstein, 52, a former blue-collar tool-and-die worker and white-collar engineer, who had become an expert on worker innovation and productivity...