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NUMMI Employee Says Plant Hides Defects
November 22, 2007

Whistleblower says defects hidden at Toyota-GM Calif. plant

Ironically enough, while on the topic of not counting defects (the TSA), this disturbing story was in the Detroit News today. A 23-year employee, a quality inspector, has filed a lawsuit claiming that the company mistreated her when she reported defects.

"According to legal documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, defects that were intentionally passed over included broken seat belts, faulty headlights, inadequate braking, mirrors falling off, engine oil leaks and steering wheel alignment problems -- all in an effort to decrease the number of defects. It is not clear whether any defects resulted in accidents.

When Cameron, a trained expert at spotting defects, complained, her bosses struck back, demoting her twice, accusing her of being crazy and violent, forcing her to submit to mental fitness tests, according to the documents. "

I certainly hope none of that is true. As the article points out, that isn't supposed to be Toyota behavior. It doesn't illustrate the ideals of quality and teamwork, nor does it seem to represent empowered employees who are able to stop the line.

I don't know what is going on inside NUMMI, by any stretch. My earlier posts about a plant tour I was on two years ago sometimes bring random and angry comments from people claiming to be NUMMI employees. The quality reputation of NUMMI is good, as judged by outsiders, not just from internal quality reports. Is the story overblown here or is NUMMI "the best of a bad bunch," where things like this are just commonplace for the industry? I certainly have my own first hand experience at an auto parts plant where top managers bent the rules on quality to keep the line running, although I never heard of falsification of quality records.

Is Toyota perfect? No, they are a company full of people, and we are fallible, we make mistakes. That's not an excuse for any of the alleged behavior, if it is true. If stories like this are true, that's bad, for the people involved, and for anyone trying to use Toyota as an inspiration for trying to do things differently, in terms of quality and employee relations. Are people at Toyota capable of those things? Probably. Is it widespread throughout the company? I hope not. Does stuff like that happen at "mass production" companies? I'm certain of it. But we hold Toyota to a higher standard -- they have asked to be, right?

While NUMMI is "jointly managed" by GM and Toyota, I consider it a Toyota plant under the Toyota Production System. It's jointly owned, but the burden needs to be on Toyota, I'd say.

It will be interesting to see how this case plays out. Here are more stories via Google News. Here is a post at TheTruthAboutCars.com that includes an alleged detail:

Cameron began retaining her original pencil written reports (to document the changes) and turning-in photocopies.

The blog has reader comments, including this story (from another auto factory) about fudging the quality numbers.

The SF Gate has a story on this, as well.

There are a few things that could be happening:

a) is this an exaggerated story that won't hold to be true?

b) is it dead on but a locally isolated incident (bad management on NUMMI's part)

or

c) the sign of a wide spread growing pain of Toyota.

We will stay tuned. I talked to Norm Bodek earlier and he emphasized that people aren't perfect (including Toyota) and that we can hope people don't use this "see Toyota isn't perfect" as an excuse to not try to implement Lean thinking, including the respect for people pillar.

David Meier also had a good comment on my Lean Blog:

Mark,
I don't know much about NUMMI, but I am going to say this- The lady might be a disgruntled employee, someone in the union who is trying to raise anti-Toyota views, or any variety of things, and I am not sure how much Toyota is managing NUMMI. I know in other US plants the number of Japanese managers is low and the management is left up to US managers. What I can say about that is that often the US managers are not deeply rooted in TPS and perhaps they make poor decisions. I certainly saw that at Georgetown from time to time. (I never saw or heard of anyone passing crucial defects though). Also at the line level some employees did not understand the principle of surfacing and celebrating problems (especially is they caused them) and as such may have taken liberties and tried to hide issues.

And I did see questionable work by people who thought they were doing the right thing (making cosmetic repairs that were questionable in my opinion).

One last thing- there is a HUGE difference between the questionability of a paint defect (cosmetic) and a brake system problem. I saw and had hundreds of disputes about cosmetic issues (because cosmetics are debatable) but NEVER saw a dispute regarding safety, or fit, or something like a rattle or leaky engine.

I do know that I encountered some people (and this lady might be one) in quality who were not able to distinguish the difference between perfection and acceptable in terms of quality. They tended to exaggerate as well.

Just my 4 cents worth. I follow Toyota rules- go and see for yourself before making any conclusions!

David Meier

Posted by Mark Graban on November 22, 2007 | Comments (0)