‘Lean, Mean at 20

Workers at the General Motors car-and-truck plant in Fremont in the 1970s didn't have an andon cord to stop the production line when things went wrong.

Willie King laughs at the very notion.

"Oh, no, no, no,'' he said. "You didn't stop the line for nothing.''

The andon cord -- a rope that workers pull to signal a quality problem or a shortage of parts -- is one innovation of the Toyota Production System that first came to the United States 20 years ago when the NUMMI plant opened in Fremont.

New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., a joint venture between Toyota and GM, revolutionized carmaking in the United States when it took over the shut-down GM plant in 1984.

NUMMI begins celebrating its 20th anniversary Thursday when executives from Toyota and GM gather in San Francisco to talk about the plant and U.S.-Japan trade relations. An employee celebration is scheduled for May.

Nummi helped introduce just-in-time delivery of parts, the notion of kaizen, or continuous improvement, and an increased reliance on teamwork -- ideas and practices now commonplace in U.S. auto manufacturing.

King remembers the changes well. The 69-year-old Oakland resident retired from NUMMI last month. He worked 25 years for GM at plants in Oakland and Fremont and was there at the beginning of NUMMI, once considered a controversial industrial experiment.

The old GM

Employment once reached 7,000 at GM's Fremont plant along Interstate 880, which operated from 1963 to 1982. Workers built a variety of trucks and cars such as the Pontiac GTO and Chevrolet Malibu.

When the facility closed in 1982, amid a slumping U.S. economy that would soon prompt Ford Motor to close its assembly plant in Milpitas, the workforce had shrunk to 2,500.

And the plant had a miserable reputation -- "one of the worst in the country'' -- with a militant union and high absenteeism, according to Dennis Cuneo. Cuneo, now a top official with Toyota, was one of the first employees at NUMMI.

In her 2003 book, "The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market,'' Micheline Maynard says the GM workforce "was known as one of the most difficult in the industry, rife with complaints of drug abuse, absenteeism and a general disinterest in anything but punching a clock.''

King, who worked for GM first as a millwright and later as an apprentice coordinator, admitted that "a lot of things went on in the plant.'' He defended its workforce as good, but says its size made it "almost like a little city,'' making it easy for problems to develop.

Training in Japan

After working for the state of California for two years, he got hired at NUMMI. Almost immediately, he went to Japan to start training.

"We didn't know anything about the concept,'' he said. "We were just playing it by ear.''

Workers were encouraged to wear uniforms and participate in morning exercises -- both unheard of in the days when GM ran the plant, King said.

But, mainly, they became well-versed in the Toyota Production System that emphasized lean manufacturing techniques, including reliance on small inventories and teams with open communication.

"We went in with an open mind,'' King said. "We were told at the beginning that it wasn't going to be like General Motors. There were meetings on top of meetings. We had to learn to get used to that. That was new for our people.''

Workers were called team members. They worked for team leaders. They shared jobs within their groups and were responsible for improving how they did their jobs.

"That really enhanced the opportunity for people to get involved,'' King said, "to do some things they hadn't really done before. They could use their minds as well as their hands.''

Also, rotating jobs meant "people weren't stuck at one undesired job all the time.''

King -- who helped train workers at NUMMI, especially skilled trades people such as electricians and machinists -- remembers the plant's first vehicles built in December 1994 with obvious pride.

"We were told by so many people that we couldn't do it,'' he said. "We were ex-General Motors. A bunch of drug addicts and alcoholics. People were determined to get in there and get it working.''

What NUMMI started in 1984 is commonplace today. Toyota built 1.3 million vehicles in four North American factories in 2003. Honda, Nissan, BMW and Mercedes-Benz now have U.S. factories. South Korea's Hyundai is building one.

And, according to quality surveys such as those by J.D. Power and Associates and Consumer Reports and efficiency studies by Harbour, the manufacturing and quality of all U.S.-made vehicles -- including those from GM, Ford and Chrysler -- is much improved over the past 20 years ago.

NUMMI convinced Toyota "that they could operate in the U.S. with a union labor force and do a great job,'' said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. And it convinced GM that if it learned Toyota's vaunted lean-production system, "you can change the way you do business.''

GM Chairman and CEO Richard Wagoner agrees, calling NUMMI "an interesting industrial experiment that we consider to have added a lot of value to General Motors.''

Only a few of the original NUMMI employees from 1984, most of whom came from the shutdown of the GM plant, remain on the line. About 800 of NUMMI's 5,600 workers have been there since 1985, a plant spokeswoman said.

Indeed, Toyota veteran Yuki Azuma, who became NUMMI's president last year, characterizes the plant as "mature and responsible'' at age 20. While still remembered for its innovative beginnings, it's now known for its quality products and efficient manufacturing, he said.

Some discord

Not that things are perfect at NUMMI. George Nano III, president of UAW Local 2244, said that management's plan to outsource hundreds of jobs over the next few years has meant "no lovey-dovey relationship'' right now.

"We have our problems,'' he said. "Hopefully we can resolve them and get back on track.''

NUMMI's outsourcing plans won't result in layoffs and are a regular practice of the Big Three automakers, plant spokesman Michael Damer said.

Despite that discordant note, Mark Hogan, a high-ranking GM executive who worked at NUMMI in the mid-1980s and serves on its board of directors, acknowledges NUMMI's influence.

"It's obviously a very important plant in Toyota's history because it was their first North American operation,'' he said. "We view it as the basis for General Motors becoming a reborn organization from a lean-production standpoint.''