Nummi - Reflection Paper

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worker against worker" especially in a unionized environment and when the organization culture is designed to reward individual performance. I was not surprised when an employee at another plant described the one worker who was looked down upon because he informed management of other team members failures, hence putting the team first. Prior to adopting NUMMI’s way of business it was every man for himself, and worker against management. I do think team design is inconsistent with a union environment. Unions exist to protect the rights of individual workers and teams exist to better achieve the objectives of management through better performance. It has become obvious in today’s business world teams perform better, especially on large or complex problems, than individuals. I think this is way the last 30 years have seen a serious decline in the number of unionized workers and the power of unions in general. They can probably coexist, but only if both sides agree to compromise and do things that are best for the organization vice the individual.

Once the NUMMI Fremont facility was operating and was determined to be a success, what should general Motors have done to implement the same production design at other General Motors facilities? Probably the first thing they should have done was start bringing in the top executives to success and change some minds. Change cannot happen if the top brass are resistant or non-supportive. Then GM should have begun bringing in workers and managers from other plants to be trained in NUMMI’s process. GM needed to change old cultural habits and its way of thinking about automobile production, and this training may have helped. Another thing they could have done was to transfer NUMMI managers to other plants to help in the transition. These managers would have to have been empowered to make changes and not be subordinated to a plant manager who was unsupportive. I guess I find it surprising GM was so resistant to this change, since the numbers and quality improvements speak for themselves. They learned to late the old ways were not profitable and needed bailing out by the American taxpayer in 2009. Despite the success of NUMMI is was closed in the spring of 2010 and with it an interesting story in company cultural reinvention.