How to Change a Culture: Lessons from NUMMI

SUMMARY:

New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. better known as NUMMI. NUMMI though specializes in
vehicle manufacturing, was having trouble producing small vehicles. NUMMI workforce also had
a horrible reputation. NUMMI would like to successfully lead its organization culture and produce
high quality vehicles. NUMMI solution is to adopt a new production and management systems.
The New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., Toyota and GM joint venture experiment in a unlikely
collaboration to bring a new group of profitable small cars to the United States. This partnership
took place in Fremont, California in a factory plant called NUMMI. GM objective was to learn
how to make small profitable vehicles and learn Toyota production and Management System.
Toyota objective on the other hand wanted to simply begin producing vehicles in the United States.
GM already had the organization in place that Toyota needed this lead to their partnership.
The workforce at the original GM Fremont factory was well-known to be the worst in producing
low quality vehicles in the GM ecosystem. The work force in those days had a horrible reputation,
frequently going out on strike filing protest after protest and even damaging quality. At the time,
the plant workforce was producing some of the worst quality vehicles for GM there level of
absenteeism regularly ran over 20%, employees would usually go on strike and sometime known
to damaging quality. Without changing employees they functional manufacturing plant was
transformed into a model facility with a new company culture. By adopting Toyota’s production
and management system, NUMMI overcame the many problems that once disallowed its ability
to achieve the objectives above. The objective of NUMMI was to create a plan to help change the
culture of the organization. NUMMI would measure there outcomes by successfully lead
expressing their organization culture and producing high quality vehicles. This level of
achievement allowed NUMMI to go from being GM’s worst factory to later becoming one of its
best. NUMMI employees where empowered to be accountable for their natures and build quality
vehicles. “What changed the culture was giving employees the means by which they could
successfully do their jobs. It was communicating clearly to employees what their jobs were and
providing the training and tools to enable them to perform those jobs successfully.