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A System To Build Great Cars and Trucks

People: Products, plants and processes are designed to allow GM's people to use their skills and abilities as efficiently as possible. Workers are organized into small teams trained and empowered to run their areas and are dedicated to problem solving and continuous improvement.

GM is working with unions on many aspects of GM's people systems strategy. This includes maintaining a high level of communication and cooperation.

The communications process and environment are dedicated to helping employees understand their work and allowing them to have input into improvement in their jobs. The traditional role of supervisor changes to be more of coach or teacher, and leaders receive an intensive training program in both lean manufacturing and people skills.

Improved people systems, with a focus on the operator, and improved material handling help to attain world-class competitiveness. The system allows direct-to-the-line delivery of material, eliminating the need for costly inventory while providing a safety benefit through the elimination of forklift trucks needed to move materials around general assembly.

Safety: GM is the industry benchmark in safety, a goal achieved through a strong partnership between GM and its unions. In 1994 safety was made the "overriding priority." GM and the union jointly benchmark safety programs at top automotive and non-automotive companies to ensure that. GM's workers realize a healthy, injury-free environment.

Quality: Developing vehicles that are simpler to build and use fewer parts enhances quality. The team concept is a critical part of managing quality by making each team responsible for managing quality in their area. Team members receive extensive training in identifying and solving problems and in quality systems such as the Andon system to request assistance and even stop production in their area if necessary to remedy problems. Error proofing strategies also enhance first-time product quality.

Responsiveness: GM's manufacturing strategy maximizes customer responsiveness, by responding fast to customer and market trends. GM is shifting from a "make-and-sell" to a "sense-and-respond" organization. A make-and-sell organization predicts what the market will want, makes it and then tries to sell it. It's a system based on high-volume manufacturing but doesn't allow GM to respond fast to a fragmented market and changing consumer tastes.

Sense-and-respond is all about moving with speed in a market that is evolving to fragmented, niche products with less volume per entry, and being flexible enough to deal with uncertainty and generate options for the product and the customer.

Another fundamental of the system is an emphasis on responding fast to customer and market trends. This flexibility begins with developing vehicles that are simpler to build. Flexible global vehicle architectures allow GM to more easily build cars, trucks and crossovers off the same architecture in one or more plants.

Cost: GM's manufacturing system concentrates on cost savings by eliminating all forms of waste that detract from our ability to be competitive. GM is pursuing leanness in all facets of production - from the design of the manufacturing buildings to allow for point-of-use material delivery, to the elimination of inventory and improved supplier responsiveness.

Machinery and equipment are purchased as integrated systems, not as bits and pieces. A lean, more efficient plant structure allows lower capital investment. As many manufacturers have realized, allowing the supply base to participate in the design and processing of a product and leverage its global learnings is smart business. A higher level of trust and involvement with the supply base help GM to leverage their capability as well as available GM internal resources.