What is NUMMI? It stands New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. located in Fremont, California. NUMMI was a joint venture by Toyota and General Motors Corporation. It started in 1984 and just recently on April 1, 2010 closed it’s doors for good ending something that was quite unique in the automotive industry which was two rival car companies making cars in the same plant.GM wanted to learn how Toyota made cars and Toyota wanted to learn how to run a plant in America.
Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life recently highlighted NUMMI in a recent program. It can be located here in a podcast. It highlights what went right and what went wrong with this idea. Did each learn what they wanted? Before too long Toyota was building other plants in the U.S. but yet GM declared bankruptcy recently and had to be bailed out. Though they were learning from NUMMI it was too little too late. It’s an interesting story of the the rise and fall of NUMMI.
