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The partners could not agree on what to make at the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI) plant next fall. GM will turn the plant over to Toyota, which has not decided what to do with it.
The fruit of GM's learning could be found in the Harbour Report 2007 productivity survey: Eventually GM put three assembly plants in the nation's top 10.
But in typical GM fashion, it took far longer than it should have. At first, each GM manager sent to NUMMI returned to a GM plant. Ron Harbour, whose father founded the Harbour Report, told Automotive News this returning creature suddenly "looks like the zealot among the other 2,999 people, and they all look at him like he's some kind of freak."
Little learning was spread. This eased only in 1992, when NUMMI graduates went to GM assignments in clusters instead of individually.
Toyota's secret was attitude. Every employee followed best practices without exception; all employees were expected to be able to do several things.
GM might have done better with a high-level executive partnership. Toyota would never have agreed to pay workers to sit idle, which GM was doing for 5,000 workers in 2005. Toyota would never have let workers race through their jobs in five or six hours and go home, the issue over which GM lost a 50-day strike at Flint, Mich., in 1998.
The NUMMI history is just one more example of the importance of workplace culture, a matter harder than the Titanic to change course on.
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