Reference Request
Record Unit 9550, New United Motor Manufacturing, Incorporated Interviews, 1990
Historical Note
In an effort to regain some of their share of the domestic market for automobiles, in the 1980s American car manufacturers embarked on a variety of reforms of manufacturing processes and management techniques. In February 1983 General Motors (GM) Corporation entered into a joint venture with Toyota to produce automobiles using Japanese management techniques at a GM plant in Fremont, California. The plant was, at the time, the least productive in the GM system. The combined corporate effort, known as New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc., or NUMMI, opened for production in December, 1984. Within five years the plant operated as efficiently as Japanese manufacturing facilities.