Sunday, April 18, 2010

Rude Awakening

Upon listening to the NUMMI podcast from NPR’s This American Life inspired me to look into this subject more deeply. I found a book on Amazon called “Rude Awakening” by Maryann Keller. This book though dated from 1989 gives a detailed history of GM’s involvement in the NUMMI plant in Fremont, California which recently shut it’s doors.1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass

The book itself is an interesting look at General Motors up to the 1980’s. It does tend to concentrate in that era but, Keller does give a background of the company so as to give you an idea on how General Motor grew into the behemoth it was at the time.  It is amazing how a company that was once the worlds largest automaker(recently Toyota took over that title) and had lost there edge.

Even though the book sort of has a hopeful tone for GM one has to wonder what happened in the twenty years since the book was publish seeing that they declared bankruptcy just last year. Apparently they didn’t learn there lessons fast enough.

Also the creation of Saturn is covered in depth here and how GM tried to re-create the lessons they learned from NUMMI. Sad to say the hype about Saturn was more remarkable than the automobiles they produced(except for the Saturn Sky roadster which I like very much.).

It would seem like there’s not much left of the company compared to the 1980’s. They had acquired EDS from Ross Perot, Hughes Aircraft,  created Nummi was starting Saturn. EDS was spun off in 1996 and is now known as HP Enterprise service. Hughes companies were divided and eventually split off from GM. NUMMI as you know recently shut’s doors after GM pulled out after filing bankruptcy. Production of Saturn’s has halted and will cease to function as of October 2010.

If your interested in automotive history this book is a good read. It will give you insight in how General Motors ended up in bankruptcy just last year.

Monday, April 5, 2010

The end of NUMMI

What is NUMMI? It stands New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. located in Fremont, California. NUMMI was a joint venture by Toyota and General Motors Corporation. It started in 1984 and just recently on April 1, 2010 closed it’s doors for good ending something that was quite unique in the automotive industry which was two rival car companies  making cars in the same plant.GM wanted to learn how Toyota made cars and Toyota wanted to learn how to run a plant in America.

Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life recently highlighted NUMMI in a recent program. It can be located here in a podcast. It highlights what went right and what went wrong with this idea. Did each learn what they wanted? Before too long Toyota was building other plants in the U.S. but yet GM declared bankruptcy recently and had to be bailed out. Though they were learning from NUMMI it was too little too late. It’s an interesting story of the the rise and fall of NUMMI.