Hi, this is Mark Raven. Welcome to episode 71 of lean
blog audio. Its July 23rd 2015, today's post
is titled throwback Thursday. This American Life on new me,
lessons and labor notes, still hates lean.
So episode number 403 of the public radio program.
This American Life originally aired in 2010 and since you're
listening to this podcast, I assume you like listening to
stuff. And you may want to may be
postponed listening to this episode until your next commutes
or your next trip and maybe go and you know download Episode 43
of This American Life about the new me car plant.
And if you want to listen to that, and then listen Maybe here
to my commentary on that story. You know, the nummi plant, if
you don't know, it was a joint venture between GM and Toyota in
Fremont, California. It's now Now actually we're
Tesla builds its Vehicles as a joint venture, the nummi plant
that meant the closed down GM Fremont plant was reopened to be
managed under the Toyota production system.
It was an opportunity for GM to learn from Toyota.
Now, This American Life. You know, asks why GM didn't
learn more the lessons from knew me?
Well, GM did learn many lessons, it wasn't enough to save the
company. From bankruptcy and I think GM
going from 50% market share to just over twenty percent market.
Share would bankrupt you in any circumstance regardless of how
lean your factories became when you have more retirees and
active employees, that that loss of market share was the biggest
problem, not the lack of lessons learned from Toyota now that
episode re-aired on NPR stations last weekend.
Which I learned about when many of you mailed me or you tweeted
at me about the program, even some of my personal Facebook
friends, who don't share my passion for lean.
Share, the link with me. I think a lot of people didn't
realize it was a repeat. Now, you know what makes it a
throwback in a way is not only the art of the the episode that
came out in 2010, by also blogged about it back.
Then in a post titled NPR on the end of the line at new me and my
story about an interviewee so you can A link to that original
blog post. If you go to lean blog dot org
slash audio 71 and there's also a link to the This American Life
episode. You can read a transcript even
though again I'm going to assume you like listening to things at
least as much as you do reading or that's more convenient for
you to do so. So you can listen, you can read.
I really do think it's an hour. Well, spent now Beyond this.
This American Life and what they talked about when I blogged
about five years ago, also floating around the twitterverse
this week was a link to a blog post from the website labor
notes and labor notes from the labor unions.
Generally very critical of lean. It was also critical of This
American Life and I had tried unsuccessfully to create an
account that would allow me to comment on the labor.
Notes website, that some technical glitches, it seems.
So I'm To share my thoughts in a bit.
And I thought well let me just write a new blog post about it.
I've got my own website. I don't need to comment on there
isn't I know labor notes in the past has read some of my posts
and we've had some back and forth but you know it's funny in
a way, a labor notes is complaining about This American
Life. Usually conservatives complain
that mpr's part of you know the liberal media, but labor notes
views, this episode, it seems as being part of You know, the vast
corporate right-wing conspiracy. So I do labor notes, doesn't
like lean. Let me know.
It's Doesn't Like This American Life there grouchier than I am.
So, you know, labor notes has lashed out before about lean
and, you know. They're, they're usually either
just complaining about management.
You know, if, if lean is an idea from those management types,
therefore, lean must be evil or they're complaining, you know,
about bad practices that aren't really lean.
And, you know, I would line, With the labor notes Riders to
complain about what I call Les more.
You lean as misguidedly executed, when lame stuff
happens, I criticize that as well, even though I'll give
credit labor notes in one of their retorts once said, lame
should really mean lean as mainly experienced.
So, yeah, touche labor notes. But, you know, from their most
recent post here, they they're writing about new me.
Trouble is the quote team concept, unquote program of
standardization D Skilling and continuous speed up wasn't such
a boon for workers as the show portrays neither be imported
version nor even the original in Japan.
So they put those scare quotes around the phrase, team concept,
you know, asking people to work in teams or the idea of
management being part of Team with workers, you know, I must
be some sort of trap. That's, I guess, you know,
that's how labor notes Visa labor notes, complains about
what they call the descaling of work.
When, you know, in reality a lien Auto Factory, really does,
you know a lot of cross training so that employees have more
skills? You know, when I worked at
General Motors before, any semblance of a lean culture, 20
years ago, that was D skilled work.
That was a management system that GM system that didn't
respect workers and their abilities, and their brains.
Lean management is very different.
And, you know, when labor notes talks about speeding up the line
and management by stress. Again, those sound like the
concepts of the old General Motors management system, and
that's what I experienced and suffered through a bit before
the plant. I worked for got a new plant
manager and that plant manager was Larry Spiegel, who gets to
say a few things in the this Life peace.
And I shared a story about him and my post five years ago.
So when Larry was asked about the difficulty he faced in
bringing, the new me approach to another GM Factory.
He basically said there were too many people convinced that they
didn't have to change. And Larry was asked by the the
correspondent Frank land fit hadn't, General Motors,
threatened to close down the Plant and Larry said, they
didn't believe them, Frank laying fit said, why?
Larry He said it's not logical, they just didn't Frank length.
It, then again, said this was one of the biggest differences
between Fremont and Van. Nuys, Van, Nuys, hadn't been
shut down. And I'll add is a comment here,
you know, as the GM plant had been at Fremont.
The one that became new me Frank again said turns out, it's a lot
easier to get Workers to change if they've lost their jobs and
then you offer them back. Without that many union members
just saw the Toyota system is, Threat and they had a point
under the Japanese system Van Nuys stood to lose a fourth of
its Workforce because the more efficient a plant becomes the
fewer workers. It needs and just as bad the
team concept hurt their seniority rights.
This have been a problem for union members back at nummi also
that's the end of quote from the story.
You know, my experience, lean Transformations, do not require
the threat of plant closure you know in healthcare organizations
like Theta care and Virginia Mason have transformed Formed
themselves without having some sort of Crisis or threatening to
shut down the hospital. Now, the threat of not eating
25% of your employees anymore. I totally understand why the UAW
and the Van Nuys plant. Wouldn't like that.
Now let's not explored in This American Life is if GM would
have made any sort of no layoffs due to no layoffs, due to lean
commitment, as many organizations do including
places like fate Are in Virginia.
Mason with GM have retrained or redeployed workers in a way that
was more constructive than the infamous GM jobs, bank with GM.
Have tried to grow the plants business.
So they could avoid firing employees.
You doing more work with the same number of employees, which
is not quote unquote, speeding up the work week, of course,
when we reduce waste and improve processes through Lane.
So it's hard to see the how you could blame employees for not
liking something in my eye. Cost them their jobs and labor
notes. Also criticized, This American
Life for blaming workers and, you know, I always thought that
so-called militant attitudes from employees or unions with a
result of bad management. You know, but Larry Spiegel, in
my experience with him, he was a great leader when I worked under
him at General Motors. He was a truly lean leader who
had the courage to do things, a new way, within General Motors.
And so here's what I tried to write on the labor notes, Larry
Spiegel was the GM plant manager who is quoted in the story.
I worked at GM from 1995 to 1997 as an engineer at the Livonia
engine plant and Larry was brought in as our plant manager
in 1996 after a number of major quality problems under the old
plant manager and his regime, the workers were blamed and it
was extremely unfair bad managers literally got in the
way of UAW members putting quality first when Larry became
the plant manager, he Rest, an all-hands meeting of hourly and
salaried employees and he told them that the days of blaming
the workers were over. The problem wasn't the workers.
The problem was the old management style Larry made that
quite clear and lived by his desire to manage in a new way
putting quality first and listening to the workers and the
factory made a lot of progress under his leadership.
Now I work today in health care, the problem.
There also is the management system, not the workers.
That's why the application. Lean in the Toyota production
system works so well. A new management style allows
people to put quality and patient.
Safety first managers actually listen to their employees and
it's nothing to complain about. But then again, labor notes
complains about lean Healthcare is if it's as evil, as they
think lean manufacturing is now, you know, GM's history is
complicated. I was never one to blame the
union for the company's problems.
I blamed leadership or a lack thereof.
Is I wrote about Out in a number of posts that I linked to here,
I don't demonize the union, I wish the union folks wouldn't
demonize lean. Now if you've listened this long
eleven and a half minutes, thank you for doing.
So I'm going to go ahead and read the post that I wrote five
years ago about this American life and the NPR story.
Here's why I wrote the story highlights.
Some of the problems you'll the Fremont, California plant had
before GM closed. For the first time in 1982, this
included workers, drinking on the job workers, having sex in
the plant, bad absenteeism rates, compounded by management,
finding random drunks at the bar across the street to then.
Come on the line to fill in workers, hitting management, so
much that they sabotage Vehicles.
Now the root cause isn't only bad workers, quote unquote.
A lot of that is due to bad management system.
Something that changed dramatically when new me was
Formed with Toyota management principles and practices.
Now, as with many things in life, it was complicated in this
post, I'm going to share my personal experiences with one of
the leaders featured in the story.
Now, new me, of course, quickly became a huge success after
reopened with mainly the same workers, but with a new
management system and new managers.
So why didn't GM the rest of GM learned?
More of these lessons? Well, there were certainly
attempts you in my second year working at the GM.
Lavanya engine plant. A new plant manager was brought
in with new me experience, a man named Larry Spiegel and one of
the early efforts to spread lean and TPS was at the GM Van Nuys
Factory in California, but the efforts failed as Spiegel
explained and he was called a quote-unquote Commando, new me,
Commando it was a term given to the GM people who were brought
in to learn from knew me, and Larry was one of the first.
It says quote. Note, the lack of receptive to
change was. So deep said Larry Spiegel, one
of the Commandos who struggled to transform the Van Nuys plan.
There were too many people convinced they didn't need to
change Spiegel said that even though GM had threatened to
close the plant workers believe that would never happen and they
stuck with their own ways. So at the Livonia engine plant
our quality and productivity not to mention morale.
We're at the bottom of the barrel even by GM standards.
Now Larry spent months, walking the plant floor or the gemba is
we would call it, he listens to people, he talked to them.
He this is a very different leadership style than before, I
mean you know he was the plant manager with about 800 people
reporting to him but he took the time to go and see that's a key
lesson from NuMe. So being a young Patient
engineer. I was ready for change.
I knew the old management mindsets weren't working.
I believed in the promise of lean and TPS even though we
couldn't call it lean and we didn't make much mention of
Toyota. So I asked Larry at one point,
you know, when were we really going to start fixing things?
Let's go and I recall his answer, he said something like,
I know what we have to do here based on his experiences at
nummi and previously at the Warren transmission, plant with
the The people here. Don't know that.
I know, I have to take time to build respect to let them know.
I've heard them and I've seen the problems firsthand.
So that encounter in Larry's, leadership, made a huge impact
on me and my young career, even though I left GM to go to MIT in
1997, I kept in touch with people from the plant and I was
happy to hear that they made great strides in the first few
years. Moving up to the top quartile in
performance. From the bottom of the barrel,
they were improving quality and productivity.
They even had a new engine program assigned to them which,
you know, helped the plant stay open, but the plant later became
the Victim of GM's, bankruptcy and was closed.
I think, probably by 2011. So that's, that's my story of
working with Larry. Spiegel, a great lean leader,
he's retired, couple years back, he was teaching lean at the
University of Michigan, you know, I think he was one of the
people that was really trying to push GM in the right direction.
So that was my blog post from five years ago. so again, if you
want to find links to any of those go to lean blog dot org
slash audio 71, thanks for listening