Abstract

"Reinventing the NUMMI Fremont plant for small trucks, 1992"

Glenn Bugos, Moment LLC (glenn@momentllc.com)

The automobile plant in Fremont, California was often reinvented for new approaches to manufacturing. It opened in 1964 as one plant in the General Motors Assembly Division, formed to redefine workplace practices and weaken the United Automobile Workers union. The UAW response at Fremont was intense and GM closed the plant. In 1984 GM formed a joint venture with Toyota and renamed the plant New United Motors Manufacturing Inc. NUMMI introduced the Toyota Production System (TPS) to the world, emphasizing teamwork and continual improvement, and there Toyota learned how to open plants in the American southeast. GM’s bankruptcy again closed the plant. Fremont meanwhile emerged as the town where Silicon Valley firms prototype manufacturing methods. In 2010 Tesla bought the plant and reshaped it, first to introduce vertical integration to modern automobile manufacture, then as heavily robotic. The plant made cars also reinvented: GM made big cars for a supposed California automobility, NUMMI made small cars for an oil-shocked America, Toyota fed America’s want for commuter trucks, then Tesla defined the electric vehicle. I am now writing a Historic American Engineering Record on this broader significance of this industrial site.

In this paper, I address one lesser-known episode: Toyota’s shift into small trucks in 1992. In 1990, as an antitrust decree limiting NUMMI expired, Toyota invested $200m in NUMMI to build 100,000 small trucks annually. For the truck line, Toyota automated the plant, built an assembly line capable of flipping a frame, added stamping and plastic presses, expanded its network of part suppliers, enhanced environmental compliance and, most importantly, re-configured paints. Toyota’s truck line remained as the nucleus of Tesla’s S/X reinvention of the plant. The first decade of NUMMI displayed how TPS reshaped labor relations; the decade following the truck line displayed the more enduring feature of TPS: lean manufacture.