>This was basically all done over UAW's dead body. It's not like process engineers working at the big three in the 80s didn't want to do those things. They were

>This was basically all done over UAW's dead body. It's not like process engineers working at the big three in the 80s didn't want to do those things. They were aware of what industry best practices were as any competent professionals would be. They just couldn't get those best practices implemented until the Japanese manufacturers created an existential threat to the status quo. Have you come across this podcast / radio programme episode? https://www.thisamericanlife.org/403/nummi https://www.thisamericanlife.org/403/nummi It's about a joint venture between Toyota and GM in the 1980s. It discusses the culture shock the US workers experienced and the labour relations at the plant. The people interviewed give their own views on why GM didn't / couldn't adopt the lessons learnt in their own plants. tl;dl The previous GM plant on the site had had terrible problems with the workers there. The new venture hired the same people (starting with the shop stewards) and brought in a totally different way of doing things which totally changed the culture. GM struggled to adopt the Toyota way of doing things in it's own plants because the entire manufacturing chain and culture across the industry had to change to make it possible. I really recommend listening to the whole thing. After NUMMI closed the Fremont site was taken over by another US manufacturer that sought to improve on existing methods with a greater degree of automation.