Someone Is Poised to Pass You By
December 23rd, 2006 by HalBullshit. Sorry, it's my reaction to the quotes in today's NY Times article, Toyota Is Poised to Supplant G.M. as World’s Largest Carmaker in the coming year. Read on and decide for yourself.
"If Toyota overtakes G.M., that is a very big deal," said Mark Hawkins, chairman of the United Automobile Workers union local at G.M.'s Flint truck plant.
Wake up Detroit! It's time we all learned from Toyota.
G.M. and the union need to work together to at least try to prevent Toyota from displacing G.M., Mr. Hawkins said, because he worries G.M. would never be able to take back the top spot after losing it. "Right now they've got a lot of momentum," Mr. Hawkins said of Toyota.
Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who will probably become chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee next year, said Toyota's strength came in part because it did not have to pay the full cost of health care coverage, a major burden for Detroit companies, and because it has benefited from the strength of the Japanese yen.
"If Toyota's worldwide production surpasses General Motors, it will simply provide further evidence of the need for the U.S. government to pursue policies that maintain and strengthen the U.S. industrial base," Mr. Dingell said in a statement Friday.
Looking back now, at least one former G.M. manager said he saw this moment coming. "We figured that we were going to have a problem," said Tom Lynch, who retired from G.M.'s Parma, Ohio, parts plant in 1987. He often gave plant tours to visiting Japanese executives. "We taught them how to beat us," he said.
There was no mention of Toyota's ambition for its employees' life-long learning, nor its respect for people, nor its no satisfaction approach, nor the accountability leaders take for their circumstances. Wake up Detroit! It's time we all learned from Toyota 1. And wake up everyone else who is not engaged in life-long learning. Someone is poised just behind you ready to pass.
- The Toyota Way [ ⇑ back ]
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December 24th, 2006 at 8:59 am
“If Toyota’s worldwide production surpasses General Motors, it will simply provide further evidence of the need for the U.S. government to pursue policies that maintain and strengthen the U.S. industrial base,” Mr. Dingell said in a statement Friday”
This is the scariest part of their remarks. Have the US taxpayer bail out years of poor management and corporate greed. Government intervention will not save manufacturing in this country.
December 29th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Bullshit is right. GM, Ford, and Chrysler are full of excuses, but you can’t go a day without reading about their bad management practices in the news. We can’t have the government bailing out failed companies. We need fewer excuses and more kaizen!
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:25 am
It’s amazing how we always can find excuses like health care costs and currency values instead of looking for the internal things we can control — productivity, vision, continual improvement…