Vienna

Will Detroit's Loss Be Japan's Gain?

Thank you for the nice article. I am from Europe and have been auditing US auto plants for some time.

The cause is that the people from GM etc I have met where so arrogant and convinced about their system, that they would not listen to any thing. I was always being told about technological leadership and US world power.

I was always quite amused since to my opinion the production systems to my opinion where technological not very advanced and very inflexible.

e.g. the production lines from GM are built to produce one type of car. If you have 3 plants and 2 types of vehicles go down and one up then 2 plants lay dead and the 1 can not cope with production capacity.

Why is this: Well setting up a flexible line is more costly and requires much more coordination. It does not suit the John Wayne management style I encountered.

In fact I would like to join GM or Ford now, since I think this can be a very interesting time.

Obviously the US auto companies need new heads with different approaches, that people who are fix minded at the US corporations have a hard time to cope with these changes.

Don't look at Toyota, do it - this is probably the greatest challenge, telling people that what they have been doing was wrong and that the people copying them are doing it better.

On Dec 07 04:33 AM bs_o_meter wrote:

> A Japanese company ( Toyota ) and an American company (Ford) decided
> to have a canoe race on the Missouri River . Both teams practiced
> long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.<br/>
>