Talk about irony on top of irony. The ad that ran with this NYT article was for ... Buick. And yesterday I was down in Georgetown, KY (just north of Lexington) at the Toyota plant. What a contrast from the GM described in this article. For years we've heard from US auto management that the problem was hide-bound unions that wouldn't change. Here's a story about workers willing to change, but management couldn't manage its porfolio of products. Toyota is Toyota; Honda is Honda; GM is Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile (finally and mercifully laid to rest), Cadillac, GMC trucks, oh, and Saturn. It has so many things to invest in, that it can't do it. There hasn't been a marketing buzz on Saturn for years. See what happens.
Toyota is running first prototypes of a new car down its production line right now, so we didn't get a live factory tour. The video tour of the plant along with a description of the famed Toyota Production System (see the November issue of Automation World for more on that) was impressive.
Lofty Promise of Saturn Plant Runs Into G.M.'s Fiscal Reality. A Saturn plant once lauded as the savior of the U.S. auto industry is among 12 factories that G.M. plans to shut or partly close. By JEREMY W. PETERS and MICHELINE MAYNARD. [NYT > Business]
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