NUMMI

New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. is an automobile manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. The factory was an old General Motors plant originally opened in 1962 and is now a joint venture between GM and Toyota. When it reopened for production in 1984, it was the first automotive joint venture plant in the United States. GM saw this joint venture as an opportunity to learn about the ideas of lean manufacturing from the Japanese company, while Toyota gained its first manufacturing base in North America and a chance to implement its production system in an American labor environment. Many business textbooks mention NUMMI when they discuss joint ventures.

NUMMI is now an award-winning facility which ranks with other Toyota plants among the most productive manufacturing operations in North America. GM places around 12 managers each year at the plant to learn lean techniques and has improved quality enough across the rest of its operations for it to show through on J.D. Power quality rankings. While the plant has been successful in adopting Lean, other GM plants have seen benefits. GM's Oshawa, Ontario plant received the 2006 JD Power Gold Plant Quality Award, the third time in the last five years.

The plant size spans the equivalent of at least 88 football fields. The plant is configured into six major areas: 1) detached Plastics facility fabricating bumpers, instrument panels, interior panels, and others, 2) Stamping facility that fabricates all visible sheet metal parts, 3) Welding facility that assembles all metallic parts into one rigid unit 4) a detached Paint facility to prepare and paint passenger vehicles 5) a detached Painting facility to prepare and paint the entire trucks, 6) main building that assembles entire vehicles complete with redundant quality checks to ensure customer satisfaction at the dealership.

Daily tours of the plant are offered free to the public.