Toyota Uses Down Time to Improve Workers’ Skills

According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, when a plant is temporarily shut down at GM, Ford or Chrysler, under terms of union contracts, workers receive most of their pay, but don’t have to show up.  On the other hand, at Toyota’s Princeton, Indiana and San Antonio, Texas plants, down time is used to put workers through a series of training sessions to improve their quality control and productivity skills and find better ways to assemble cars.  Jim Lentz, president of Toyota’s US sales unit, says, “It would have been crazy for us to lose people for 90 days and then rehire and retrain people and hope that we have a smooth ramp-up coming back in.”  This effective use of down time also sends employees at these Toyota plants a clear message that their company truly cares about them.  As one assembly worker put it, “One of the major things that everyone is grateful for is that they [the company] thought enough of us to keep us here.”  Talk about a novel idea!  Is it any wonder why Toyota is running circles around GM, Ford and Chrysler?- Ross / RossReck.com

Please fell free to post your comments. If you don’t have a FREE WordPress account, click on “Get a free WordPress account” just below the login area after clicking below.