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