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Hey - did you know if you click on the title of a thread it will take you to the first unread post since you last visited that thread?
but were afraid to ask: 
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Pretty Please - add it to our Events forum(s) and add to the calendar! >> 
PC
Obi Wan
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Steve said:
There’s a term for it in engineering, <span style="font-weight: bold">NIH</span>; <span style="font-weight: bold">N</span>ot <span style="font-weight: bold">I</span>nvented <span style="font-weight: bold">H</span>ere.Steve said:
The management at old school companies is so dense, so arrogant and so set in their ways they’re incapable of opening their minds to alternative approaches.
They will borrow tools, techniques and, most aggressively, <span style="font-style: italic"><span style="font-weight: bold">buzzwords</span></span>. But using somebody else’s methodologies without understanding and adopting their core principles is like borrowing a surgeon’s scalpel without understanding anatomy.
DNK said:
Yes, the plant was reopened as a joint venture between Toyota and GM, but with all Toyota management. They also had a completely different union contract, following Toyota’s labor model, <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-style: italic">not</span></span> UAW’s or GM’s.
So while it did indeed demonstrate that American <span style="font-style: italic">workers</span> can be as productive as any, it also showed that the ways American management and labor unions commonly approach production was (and generally still is) deeply flawed.
Warranty costs also include costs from failures of vendor supplied parts. The Fremont plant had to use many US vendors who had not yet been brought up to Toyota’s functional standards.RonMacPherson said:
What’s most significant in terms of the current financial situation is that the Fremont plant produced those cars in much less time, with much less manpower.
And GM’s practice was to build in random quality and try to fix problems at the end of the line, before shipping a car out (and sometimes expecting dealers to fix them). Everybody (except apparently US managers) knows that fixing a defect is far more expensive and time consuming than doing it right in the first place.
Toyota’s mantra is to get it right as you build it. So even if the final output is the same Toyota’s way costs less and goes faster.
Toyota changed the production equipment and processes to meet <span style="font-style: italic">their way of doing things</span>, which is something no American car company could have or would have done. And they <span style="font-style: italic">used</span> the equipment and processes according to <span style="font-style: italic">their way of doing things</span>.RonMacPherson said:
If you had given the same equipment and assembly instructions to any of the US auto makers they would have failed immediately. It’s not enough to have the tools. You have to have the understanding and the will to use them correctly.
They use what western analysts call <span style="font-weight: bold">TPS</span>, the <span style="font-weight: bold">T</span>oyota <span style="font-weight: bold">P</span>roduction <span style="font-weight: bold">S</span>ystem. Toyota simply calls it “the way we do things.”RonMacPherson said:
TPS does include much Deming influence, but it’s far more comprehensive. A great deal of it was developed internally, but it also incorporates concepts from many others, like Henry Ford, Frederick Taylor, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, and the US War Department.
For more on the subject, I’d highly recommend <span style="font-style: italic">The Machine That Changed the World</span> by Womack and Roos. It sort of kicked off America’s understanding of why the Japanese car makers were kicking our butts. Sadly, even though it was first published eighteen years ago and numerous other books, studies and analyses have followed, most of the managers in this country are still clueless.
PC.
