In the 1980s, Roger Smith said General Motors’ problems included long gestation times to bring new vehicles to market. In addition to engineering delays, plants were not designed for quick retooling.
Today, we’re told GM has problems with long lead times and its plants can’t switch from one model to another. Indeed, the chairman, Rick Wagoner, didn’t even know eight flexible plants existed when he announced it was a new priority.
Smith opened a plant in Fremont, California, with Toyota to learn better manufacturing processes. Micheline Maynard reports that no one from GM attended a plant walk through with Toyota executives to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the joint venture, although some did show for the public ceremony.
When Chrysler was bankrupt, Lee Iacocca said one problem was benefits, and wanted to transfer the cost of health care to the federal government, like its rivals in Japan and Europe. No one listened. Today the answer is manage automobile prices by eliminating medical insurance, but don’t try to manage medical costs.
Observers like Daniel Arst claim GM’s problems 20 years ago were its union contracts, and that it’s still too compliant. Union members complain the UAW’s not assertive enough. When Chrysler was bankrupt, the union demanded a place on the board. The adversarial model was more familiar, but has reached a crisis with suppliers who superintend labor by sending productive work to other countries.
When Ford and GM first noticed the Japanese were doing things differently, they experimented with some of their methods. R. P. Coe, a Ford worker in Indianapolis, claims
The Company quit investing in the workers, who drove business success through employee involvement programs. These programs saved Ford millions and led to many cost reductions and help improve manufacturing processes.How can so many smart people fail to learn?
Back when I was an undergraduate taking courses in education, I was told people who learned things easily also relearned easily, but those who had problems learning something had an even harder time relearning.
Financial and engineering curricula both have sequences of challenging courses. Some schools deliberately increase the difficulty to weed out students and enhance their reputations. Those students who survive will either be very good, or those who may become too committed to what was so difficult to master.
From the first hiring freezes in the 1970s, many have feared for their jobs. In periods when there were more applicants than jobs, those who were hired felt lucky. Each time companies announced layoffs, those who survived felt lucky to stay.
Luck is not predictable, and does not produce rationale behavior. Gamblers like John DeLorean may respond with bravado. Most are more conservative and respond to the unpredictable with superstitious behavior that stresses repeating what worked before. When rituals fail, men look for what they did wrong, analyze how they deviated from the past.
Nothing has worked because no one committed to any solution long enough for it to work. Coe complains Ford abandoned Japanese employee relations, Maynard reports GM abandoned manufacturing innovation, Arst tells us companies and the UAW abandoned non-traditional agreements, shareholders claim managers abandoned a commitment to cost containment.
When one listens to people discussing today’s problems at GM, one hears the same things one heard 30 years ago. One could be excused for thinking the problems are still the same. Instead, I suspect the problems today are the direct consequences of 30 years of reaction, and that constant retrenchment has created its own view of the possible.
Superstition does not encourage permanent change; it promises quick techniques for perpetuating what worked in the past, and reinforces the view the past was a golden age that needs to be restored. Men who’ve come through rigorous training programs may be even more likely to hold to what first worked.
It would seem as soon as something worked, and things improved, people didn’t just feel safe reverting to what they did before, but felt compelled to return to the previous mode as evidence of success. When problems resurface, they never reconsider the last thing tried, but look for a new charm. Today’s solutions, sending as much work overseas as possible, are as much ritual as measured response, but with more severe consequences than 30 years of insecurity.
Sources
Arst, Daniel. “Hand in Hand, Over the Precipice, The New York Times, 2 April 2006.
Coe, R. P. “Ford Mood,” Detroit News, 27 January 2006.
Maynard, Micheline. “At G.M.’s Helm Or Going Under?,” The New York Times, 29 March 2006.
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