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New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. is an automobile manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. The factory was an old General Motors plant 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 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 labour environment.

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. Whilst the plant has been successful in adopting Lean, GM's success is far more limited. Kochan, Lansbury & MacDuffie in "After Lean Production" state that "the NUMMI story is well known, so it will suffice to say that GM did a terrible job of learning from that experience."

Currently, the NUMMI plant produces the Toyota Corolla compact car, Toyota Tacoma pickup truck and the Pontiac Vibe station wagon. In the past, it has also produced the Geo Prizm, the later Chevrolet Prizm, and the Chevrolet Nova from 1984-1988; as well as the Toyota Voltz, the Japanese right-hand drive version of the Pontiac Vibe - both are based on the Toyota Matrix, which is manufactured in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. Employment is nearly 5,500 workers. NUMMI is a union organization represented by The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) Local 2244. NUMMI sells 60% of their parts to Toyota and 40% to General Motors. NUMMI has 160 robots to build the three cars they do today.

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.

Many Japanese philosophies are in action here, due to the Toyota connection. Below is a link to photos of the Plant. The tour is free to the public.

• Pontiac Vibe
• Toyota Corolla
• Toyota Tacoma

• Toyota Corolla Sprinter
• Geo Prizm
• Toyota Hilux
• Chevrolet Nova
• Chevrolet Prizm

• Official NUMMI site
• Autointell NUMMI page
• NUMMI Tour Tales from the Lean Blog
• Photo Tour of NUMMI

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