"Lean at NUMMI"
Manufacturing Engineering
September 2005, pp. 73-84
It is now more than 20 years since the Toyota/GM joint venture (New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. or NUMMI) brought the Toyota Production System to Fremont, California. Some of the original workforce has retired, and NUMMI has re-dedicated its efforts in lean manufacturing over the past few years.
One of the newer Toyota Production System approaches implemented at NUMMI is jishuken activities: "Jishuken is when you give a very challenging project to a person or group of people and they work on it in a very short period of time-four or five days...You work on improving uptime or quality, reducing scrap, or reducing the number of defects that are coming out of the plant. They work 12-15, even 18 hours a day, doing the work."
Another approach being used is called Set Parts Supply or SPS: "Set Parts Supply is where we work on eliminating line-side parts...The idea is to have the right part at the disposal of the operator, at the right time."
An all-new training building is being completed on the plant site this fall. All 4800 team members working at the plant will receive Lean training activities in the training building each year.
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