Tag: GM

This summer marked 30 years since I started my first job out of college--working as an engineer at a General Motors engine plant in...

Thirty years ago, I was fresh out of college and working at General Motors. Yikes! 30 years! It was a time of reckoning--GM was finally...

For a long time, I've heard the phrase "the hidden factory" used to describe various forms of waste in a factory, including rework operations...

I've written before about Bob. He was the Plant Superintendent (the #2 in command, if you will) at the GM Livonia Engine Plant, where...

Updated May 2024: I worked with ChatGPT 4 to create a longer, hopefully better, version of the alternate history story here. ChatGPT is still all...

I've updated and am republishing an old 2005 blog post that I wrote about a former GM assembly worker, Ben Hamper, who has some...

For Episode #363, I'm joined by Crystal Davis as we discuss: What are you seeing in terms of how Covid19 is disrupting businesses? How...

Lee Iacocca, the former CEO of Chrysler, passed away on July 2. Ross Perot, founder and former CEO of EDS, also passed away a...

Hat tip to Stan Feingold from StoreSMART (a Lean Blog sponsor) for sending me this article: Bob Lutz Talks Panel Gaps, Tesla, and Why Every...

I was invited to be a guest on a Detroit radio talk show that's hosted by Dr. Paul Reeves, a show called "Dr. Paul's...

Ever since I started podcasting in 2006, I've been using a company called "Hipcast" to be the "hosting" company for the podcast audio files...

I take no joy in the troubles of any automaker, be it Tesla, Nissan, GM or any others over time. Of course, Nissan and GM have been in the news most recently, with the firing (and jailing) of Nissan and Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn. And now, GM has announced major layoffs, the cancelation of some passenger car programs, and the shutdown (and possible closure) of five plants in North America. I was talking to a friend the other day and I predicted that we'd see news headlines about something like "GM to get Leaner." These headlines would be using the word "lean" to mean "get smaller" instead of referring to "Lean" (which I capitalize as a proper noun) as a synonym for the Toyota Production System. I was disappointed to hear GM's CEO, Mary Barra, a long-time GM employee using the word "lean" in the context of the company getting smaller.