It's been long rumored, but is now confirmed by Toyota that they are going to stop production at their ground breaking NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA.
Toyota will move production to other plants, BusinessWeek reports.
It is a sad day, as NUMMI was the first real proof that Toyota's model would work in the U.S. with American workers. I worked under a fantastic plant manager at GM who had been one of the first American GM managers to learn there… and he learned well. And I learned a lot because of that, about Lean and about leadership and transformational change.
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Mark's new book is The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation.
He is also the author of Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, and the anthology Practicing Lean.
Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.
It is indeed a sad day. Was this simply a capacity issue or partially a distribution issue as well? They just finished building a brand new plant in Woodstock, Ontario.
My understanding was that the shutdown was a combination of factors: old factory, Toyota had excess capacity, GM pulled out (that was probably the main factor right there).
I didn’t realize the “new” GM pulled out until I read some of your other links. I would agree that this was likely the main reason.
Thanks