NUMMI hands GM's 'worst workforce' the andon cord - and the line finally stops

Fremont Assembly was 'considered the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States' - in the words of the UAW's own regional director. Absenteeism ran so high some mornings managers could not start the line; workers sabotaged cars with Coke bottles inside door panels; and mistakes rolled on down the line to be fixed later.

Give the power to stop the line to the workers: an andon cord any assembler can pull, a no-layoff promise, one cafeteria for all ranks - quality becomes everyone's job.

In 1984 Toyota and GM reopened Fremont as NUMMI, rehiring over 85% of the same workers. They trained at Toyota's Takaoka plant in Japan, wore the same uniforms and ate in the same cafeteria as managers under a no-layoff policy - and got the andon cord: pull it, a light comes on, a team leader runs over; if the fix takes too long, the line stops.

Within roughly a year, Corollas built by the 'worst workforce' matched Japanese plants for defects per 100 vehicles. The plant ran until 2010, built nearly 8 million cars - and the Toyota Production System it demonstrated became the template American industry calls lean manufacturing.

Before 1984, General Motors' Fremont Assembly was famous for all the wrong reasons. The UAW's Bruce Lee called it 'the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States'; workers drank and smoked on shift, absenteeism was so absurd that managers sometimes could not start the line, and some sabotaged vehicles outright - 'Coke bottles inside the door panels, so they'd rattle and annoy the customer.' The one inviolable rule was that the line never stopped: one worker watched a man fall into a pit and the line kept rolling, with defects to be fixed later.

After the 1970s energy crisis, GM needed small, well-built cars, and Congress was threatening import restrictions; Toyota wanted its first American plant and a guide to the UAW. The joint venture they named NUMMI made an audacious choice: rehire over 85% of that same Fremont workforce. Toyota trained workers at its Takaoka plant in Japan, put everyone in the same uniforms with the same cafeteria and parking, promised no layoffs - and strung a thin nylon rope along the line: the andon cord. A pull lights the board and summons a team leader; fix it fast, or the line stops.

For GM veterans it was a revelation - one saw, on training in Japan, a worker stop an entire line to fix a single bolt. The results arrived fast: Corollas built in Fremont were judged equal in quality to Japan-built ones, with similar defects per 100 vehicles, produced by a workforce that two years earlier had been unable to start its own line. The plant's peak year, 2006, turned out 428,633 vehicles.

The andon cord moved the decision to where the knowledge was: the person at the workstation knew first that something was wrong, so the person at the workstation got the power to halt production.

The no-layoff promise made honesty affordable - workers could afford to pull the cord, and management could afford to hear the truth, because neither risked a paycheck.

Sameness - one uniform, one cafeteria, one parking lot - deleted the visible class system that had made the old plant adversarial.

Rehiring the same 'worst workforce' was the experiment's point: if Toyota's system could turn them around, the method, not the people, had been the variable all along.

The problem was rarely the people: hand the same 'worst workforce' real authority over quality and a fair deal to match, and the sabotage stops being rational.

NUMMI ran for 25 years, averaging 6,000 vehicles a week and nearly 8 million cars in total. GM, distracted and slow, took years to copy the lessons - This American Life's reporting framed NUMMI as the school GM attended but never graduated from. When GM went bankrupt in 2009 it pulled out of the venture, and on April 1, 2010 the last red Corolla rolled off the line; 4,500 workers lost their jobs. The site itself got a second life months later, when Tesla bought it for $42 million and turned the old NUMMI plant into the Tesla Factory.