Word: toyotas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...fighting with GM all the time," says United Auto Workers committeeman Ed Valdez. "The product was going down the line with no one paying any attention to it. 'Ship it! Ship it!' they said." Today, working for New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., a joint venture formed by GM and Toyota in 1983, the same workers are producing almost defect-free Chevrolets and Toyotas with a higher efficiency rating than any GM plant...
...difference is that two very dissimilar cultures have come together -- and sometimes have not come together -- to produce what has been hailed as "a new kind of workplace." Back in the early '80s, Toyota's president said the company would never operate a U.S. plant organized by the U.A.W. For their part, more than a few U.A.W. people said they'd never work for "the Japs." Five years later, the effect the two cultures have had on each other can be summed up in one sentence: the Americans are working better, and the Japanese are enjoying life more...
...Toyota's task within the joint venture was to implant its efficient, low- cost production system in GM's Fremont factory. GM is represented by 17 management-level employees at NUMMI, while Toyota has 36, including the president and executive vice president. One of the first things the Japanese did was eliminate executive perks such as reserved parking places and a separate cafeteria. Then they turned the top-down style of American management -- the tradition of the industrial engineer as the first and last word on how a car is made -- on its head. As NUMMI president Kan Higashi says...
Since NUMMI was established, every one of its 2,500 employees has had hundreds of hours of training. Nearly 500 of them were sent to Toyota City in Japan. They are not learning how to make cars. They are being taught how to work together more efficiently. More kaizens, less muda. "NUMMI is different," says assembly-line inspector Martha Gendel, "because the worker is being treated differently...
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...