Word: toyotas
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...company does put workers inside what Olson bluntly calls the "Toyota vise." He describes his Japanese employer as "an immensely stubborn, universally tenacious company. There's this hatred of waste, and [you're] continually driving to get more for less. You're never happy. You're never allowed to be satisfied. Attacks and setbacks are only used as learning exercises...
...Toyota's relentless cost engineering creates efficiencies that Detroit can chase but not match. Its philosophy of continuous improvement--rethinking the thousands of steps that go into building each model-- allows Toyota to constantly trim material costs and production time. The company lowered the base price of its 1997 Camry by 4%, for example, after taking steps that included streamlining the front-bumper assembly from 20 parts to 13 and reducing the number of steel body fasteners from 53 to 15. Such improvements enable Toyota to assemble a car in 21 hours, vs. 25 for Ford, 27 for Chrysler...
...Toyota remains un-American, at least as far as the auto industry is concerned, in one key aspect: it is a nonunion shop, a status that is also subject to intense discussion in local communities. Roger Myers, a county commissioner in Indiana who helped bring Toyota to Princeton, was a longtime executive of the United Mine Workers union and sees the new truck plant as a fertile ground for labor organizers. "I know the jobs have to be there before the union is there," Myers says, "but this is still a union community. I think there will be an attempt...
...within Toyota, executives have been hotly debating whether to bring even more manufacturing to the U.S. from Japan. The most ambitious planners foresee spinning off Toyota's U.S. operations into a new American company, with its headquarters in a city like Chicago and its own listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Says Gieszl: "We're not content with current levels. It's conceivable that we could become the third largest automaker...
That will take some doing: Chrysler builds roughly twice as many vehicles in the U.S. as Toyota does. But such talk-- as well as the prospect of precious, high-paying jobs--is music to the ears of town fathers and mothers in the hamlets along I-64. They'd surely welcome the opportunity to be the next stop on Toyota Road...