TEAM CONCEPT: : GM Plant Chief Says New Work Rules Will Benefit Company Despite Slow Start
Four months ago, General Motors installed a new, highly touted Japanese manufacturing method called Team Concept at its Van Nuys assembly plant.
Things have not gone as well as predicted at the plant, which makes Pontiac Firebirds and Chevrolet Camaros. The plant has fallen 1,500 cars behind its production schedule, which is about two days of assembly work.
In Team Concept, employees work in groups on entire sections of a car, instead of performing a single repetitive task. When a worker spots a defect, he or she has the power to stop the assembly line, shutting down production. Team Concept eliminates many job classifications and encourages worker-management cooperation.
But the local United Auto Workers chairman in charge of bargaining, Peter Z. Beltran, remains opposed to Team Concept. Beltran says it is merely an excuse to trim the work force and overtax employees.
In August, the Van Nuys plant began manufacturing the 1988 Firebird and Camaro models, but it took the plant 25 days to meet its daily production schedule. Last year during the model changeover, the plant was up to speed in 13 days. Van Nuys plant manager Ernest Schaefer blames most of this year’s delay not on Team Concept but on complicated design changes that were made on the 1988 models.
Making matters worse for GM is the fact that in August the company shut down its Norwood, Ohio plant, the only other plant that produced Firebirds and Camaros.
On Sept. 4 Schaefer wrote a letter to the 4,000 Van Nuys employees pointing out that GM was losing customers to Ford and other car manufacturers because workers were stopping the assembly line too frequently.
Problems with Team Concept come at a time when the Van Nuys plant, like all GM plants, must contend with the prospect of a strike. Two weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. and the UAW agreed to a new three-year contract that includes sweeping job guarantees. GM chairman Roger Smith is hopeful that his company will match Ford’s agreement, but many analysts have predicted a strike.
Last week, plant manager Schaefer sat down with Times staff writer Gregory Crouch to discuss these issues and others. He opened with this disclaimer: “If you paint a picture of this plant that’s going down the tubes, you’re going to fail because this plant is going to be a smashing success. It really is. It already is in the eyes of those who know.”
Question: What evidence is there that Team Concept is a success?
Answer: If we were really in serious trouble, do you think General Motors would have shut Norwood down?
Q: Couldn’t GM simply have made a poor management decision in closing down the Norwood plant?
A: If we were going down the tubes, the solution for General Motors was fairly simple. Don’t close the Norwood plant. Shut down Van Nuys. And they didn’t do that. So in my mind that is evidence that . . . things aren’t absolutely bonkers here.
Q: Quality is supposed to be the principal benefit of Team Concept. But workers report that only 20% to 50% of the cars at any given time are free of defects the first time through the assembly line. Isn’t that low?
A: That is starting to come up. . . . I don’t have any numbers to give you there. But that continues to improve.
Q: In your letter to employees, you told workers that they were stopping the assembly line too frequently and that the lower production schedule was costing GM customers. Why did you send the letter?
A: I was very concerned that if we got too far behind schedule and the customer demand was there then we’d get ourselves into a problem because we just couldn’t meet that demand.
Q: What do GM’s executives think of Team Concept so far?
A: In all honesty, there is still a wait-and-see attitude. But we’re going to be successful. I think Detroit is saying we haven’t run long enough to really know all the ins and outs.
Q: In 1986, General Motors threatened to close the Van Nuys plant unless workers ratified Team Concept. The workers agreed, but by a very narrow margin. In earlier interviews you said that the future of the Van Nuys plant is dependent on the success of Team Concept. Is that still true?
A: Absolutely. I think the success of Team Concept and those kinds of approaches to run a business is crucial to the automobile industry in this country, to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. None of them are going to survive if we don’t get involved in these kinds of systems.
Q: There are rumors along the assembly line that workers are intentionally stopping the line. Do you have any evidence of this?
A: I think a lot of people working on the final line see that the line keeps stopping and they say, “Why is this line stopping?” And they perceive that maybe somebody back there is just yanking on the cord. . . . There probably was some of that going on earlier. It wasn’t major and I think it has disappeared by now.
Q: After your September letter, there were reports that team leaders began telling their members not to stop the line regardless of defects. Is this true?
A: There’s absolutely no question in my mind but that we have supervisors and we have team leaders who go out there and tell their teams, “You got to run the line.” That’s not what we want them to do.
Q: Are workers disillusioned with Team Concept?
A: Yes. I don’t know if disillusioned is the right word. . . . I think morale is down a little bit but it’s still higher than it was under the old system. And there’s still tremendous support, although there are problems. I think everyone is saying, “Yes, we see a lot of the problems and yes, we’ve had to come down a notch from our expectations . . . but it’s still a good system and we’ve got to make it work.” . . . I always said that this is a process where you take three steps forward and then you take one or two backwards every once in a while. And that’s kind of what we’re going through.
Q: Have there been any communiques from Detroit concerning a strike at GM?
A: No.
Q: When will Team Concept be the lean, smooth-running machine it was advertised to be?
A: I think we’re practically there. We’re starting to build our schedule now on a regular basis. We’ll continue to make improvements but they’re going to be much smaller improvements. We’re seeing almost daily improvement in quality. And we’ll continue to see that improvement.
