A joint venture of Toyota and GM known as NUMMI gave amazing success stories, including the conversion of the worst GM plant in the world-class models. Examination of how this transformation took place gives an idea of the corporate culture change and lean manufacturing. The most important and difficult "cultural shift" that has to occur in a lean manufacturing transformation of the whole concept revolves around the problems. What is our attitude towards them? What do we do when someone finds and opens one? Making it easy to learn from the mistakes means changing our relationship to them. That is lean cultural shift. The way to change the culture is not the first to change the way people think, but instead to start by changing the behavior of people. Integration of quality, support and ownership in the work is vital. Those of us trying to change our organizations'culture need to define what we want to do is set the way in which we want to behave and want others to behave, training, and then do what is necessary to reinforce these behaviors. "Hide
by John Shook Source: MIT Sloan Management Review 8 pages. Publication Date: January 1, 2010. Prod. #: SMR340-PDF-ENG
Related Case Solutions & Analyses:
Getting New Hires Up to Speed Quickly
Vignette: The Rebar Dilemma
Beyond the Business Case: New Approaches to IT Investment
Gary Rodkin at Pepsi-Cola North America (B)
Gazprom and Hermitage Capital: Shareholder Activism in Russia
The Rise and Fall of Iridium
Loblaw Companies Limited: Preparing for Wal-Mart Supercenters
Silent Killers of Strategy Implementation and Learning
Challenge of Growth
Mark Miller (A)
