Tag: NUMMI
Toyota vs. Tesla: What Manufacturing Mindsets Reveal About Quality and Culture
Tesla builds cars in what used to be the NUMMI factory, a joint venture between Toyota and GM (which meant it was run as a Toyota plant with "Lean" practices). Before that, it was a dysfunctional GM plant. Now that it's a Tesla plant, did they learn from Toyota or does it seem more like "the old GM?"
Before “Just Culture,” There Was NUMMI: Learning Instead of Blaming
TL;DR: NUMMI proved in the 1980s what healthcare is still learning today: you can't punish your way to safety. Real improvement comes from mutual...
Long-Term Thinking: What NUMMI Understood and GM Struggled to Practice
TL;DR: GM said it believed in long-term thinking. NUMMI actually practiced it. A 1987 GM executive summary admitted that short-term financial pressure drove decisions...
Mutual Trust and Respect: What Really Made NUMMI Work
TL;DR: NUMMI's success was not driven by Lean tools alone, but by leadership behaviors that treated people as partners in quality and improvement.
When you...
Inside the 1987 NUMMI Management Practices Executive Summary: Why Leadership Mattered...
TL;DR: In 1987, GM accurately documented why NUMMI worked--and it wasn't tools, techniques, or discipline. This internal report reveals a management system built on...
Five NUMMI Tour Lessons That Still Define Lean Thinking
A 2005 tour of the NUMMI plant revealed lessons about Lean that had little to do with tools and everything to do with leadership,...
Inside NUMMI: Isao Yoshino on Toyota’s Cultural Transformation in America
A former Toyota leader shares firsthand insights on the mindset shifts, leadership behaviors, and management systems that transformed NUMMI from a failed GM plant...
Lessons from Toyota Culture: Embracing Problems, Kaizen, and Psychological Safety
tl;dr: Toyota's culture treats problems as opportunities for learning--not failures to hide. Lessons from Toyota leaders show how kaizen, psychological safety, and trust enable...
Accountability in Leadership: A GM Flashback on Blame, Fear, and Culture
TL;DR: A GM flashback shows how blame-based, command-and-control leadership destroys accountability instead of creating it. Real accountability starts at the top--when leaders model learning,...
If GM Had Learned from NUMMI: An Alternate History of Lean...
TL;DR: GM had the chance to learn the Toyota Production System firsthand at NUMMI starting in 1984. They didn't. I asked ChatGPT to imagine...
Why “On Deck Chairs” Can Improve a Covid Vaccination Clinic Flow...
My previous post in this series: A Lean Guy Gets Vaccinated at Dodger Stadium
On Saturday, March 6th, I had the opportunity to visit two...
A Look Back at Posts About Visiting Toyota Plants in Texas...
Today, I'll be touring the Toyota truck plant in San Antonio again, the plant known as TMMTX. I'm there with our "Symposium on Learning Organizations" group, all 40 of us. In this post, I share some pre-tour goals and share some links to previous Toyota plant visits (in Texas and Japan).
