OK, it's a love letter to Toyota, written by a local Mississippi paper pleased as punch that their audience are enjoying the economic uplift provided by a new, $1.3b Toyota factory. But The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal still offers a fascinating look at how ToMoCo gets the party started at a new production facility. "Numerous training sessions at other Toyota sites, including Georgetown, Ky., and San Antonio, are part of the regimen. TMMMS [Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi] employees will spend three weeks or so at one of those facilities, then return home for training at area community colleges for a few weeks. The schedule rotates for a few months until employees are ready to 'graduate.' Then the next batch of employees starts the process again. But the training doesn't stop… Toyota workers are cross-trained to do other jobs. The premise is simple – the more you know, the more you can do, the more valuable you are." Production at the new plant– just outside Elvis' birthplace in Tupelo– begins in late 2009 for the 2010 model year Highlander.
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What, the line workers can’t just learn one job and do it for 30 years? Has GM taught them nothing?
From I read on other forums, GM line workers do not work just a single job. It would be interesting to know the background of these people and how the training investment Toyota is making compares to what GM, etc. put in to their new hires.
UAW workers can do any job (within their classification) at any time. This is because all jobs are required to require no skill.
In coal mining, we would call this cross-training. It seems to be popular at mines, but not so on assembly lines.
This is why the UAW is out-dated and why Toyota isn’t interested in unions. These days, most employers value their workers and don’t treat them disposably. Because Toyota invests more in their employees, they will expect more from them and they’ll get it. Union mentalities do not wish to any more than they must, so I imagine UAW isn’t all that interested in Toyota either.
It’d be interesting to know the number of job classifications at assorted manufacturers’ assembly plants. Like Toyota, GM, NUMMI, Ford, Honda… I wonder what the range is?
In the UAW plants you bid on a job and a shift all according to seniority. If you bid on the job to install 3 bolts on the engine that is your job. You do that same job every day and are not required to do anything else.
Where does this info come from? On the GMI forum, a guy who works in the Wentzville van plant told a much different story. Workers had to be trained on several jobs if not every job performed by their team, IIRC about a dozen jobs. I find it hard to believe it could be any other way today given noshows and turnover.
This is an example of why Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai and BMW will come to be seen as the new domestic auto industry. When the only autoplant for hundreds if not thousands of miles has one of those names on it and a supplier base is built around it, then it will be near impossible to paint Toyota as a “them” and GM as “Us” at least in the south.
Amazing that it’s oh so easy to bolt a car together, yet people are lost when comes to trying to perform an oil change.