Goodbye...
John Maloney
Hi –
GM @ NUMMI is finished. Good riddance.
New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) is (was) California’s only car plant. It was a JV between Toyota-GM. It is in Fremont, CA (NorCal, Bay Area).They produce about 1200 units a day. The models are the Toyota Corolla, the Toyota Tacoma and the Pontiac Vibe (WTF?).
BTW, In 1997, the Toyota Corolla became the best selling nameplate in the world, with over 35 million sold as of 2007. Over the past 40 years, one Toyota Corolla car has been sold on average every 40 seconds. (worldcarfans.com)
This JV was a cynical farce. In typical GM doublespeak, the end came like this:
First:
"GM continues to express strong commitment to NUMMI and the production of a joint-venture vehicle with Toyota at this plant," said Lance Tomasu, a spokesman for the NUMMI factory on 27 April 2009. (Contra Costa Times)
Second:
“General Motors officials said they plan to end their quarter-century involvement with Toyota.” 28 June 2009. (San Jose Mercury)
The Truth:
"GM is raping everybody. I think Toyota has their act together more," said Mike Chin, who has worked at NUMMI for 12 years on Jun 29, 2009. (Contra Costa Times)
I had the fortunate experience to direct an eight-figure, 60-person enterprise software project (EPR) development and deployment at NUMMI. Wow! What a learning. Here are a few quick vignettes and the value network ‘take-aways’ that stood out.
1.) In the enormous cafeteria at lunchtime there would always be 10, 15 sometimes 20 Japanese workers engaged in passionate exchange at large round tables while eating miso soup and sushi. Far across the vast hall, alone, would be some scary-looking, morose UAW worker wolfing down a double cheeseburger while staring into space. Take away: To know the health of your value networks, see who is talking at lunchtime.
2.) An administrative LAN had a virus. It was controlled by a UAW worker that was rotated-in from the manufacturing line. It was escalated to me by one of our development supervisors. I went over and said, “Let’s inoculate.” (It was simple fix.) The UAW guy said, “we can’t do that.” I laughed and said, “Yeah, right.” Big mistake. Bottom line it was a ‘union network’ and hands-off. They WANTED the virus as a chip for collective bargaining. (Trust me, I could not make this up.) Take away: Never, ever let ‘organized labor’ infect your value networks or any form of information or knowledge work.
3.) A handful of people including myself took mass transit (BART) to the car plant every day. (The irony was delicious.) Curiously, NUMMI furnished a van service from the BART station to/from the factory every day (20 minutes each way). Of course this made no sense – for a car company to support mass transit this way. So, one day I asked, “Why would a car company provide this jitney service, thus taking consumers OUT of their product market stream?” The answer was quick and cynical. The nice UAW lady asked me if I signed a paper for each van ride to-and-fro, morning and afternoon. I said yep. She then says they collect those signatures monthly in a binder and submit them to the environmental authorities in return for credits for pollution fines generated by emissions from the NUMMI paint shop. Oh. Take away: When conducting VNA always practice whole system thinking!
Basically, NUMMI was a great Japanese car plant. I was very much at-home with the Toyota Production System (TPS), Lean, Hoshin-Kanri, TQM, fish bones, control charts and all other quality and manufacturing methods of a thriving, modern car factory, e.g.,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoshin_Kanri
The GM and union role in NUMMI was kooky and belligerent. It seemed liked some bizarre window dressing for arrogant GM executives in Detroit that needed to ‘do something’ about Toyota. In the end the GM arrogance and union excess failed completely and confidently, of course, with GM’s Chapter 11.
-j