You can say the same about Apple. According to Gartner their share of the personal computer market has dropped from 15% in 1980 to less than 3% today. You can also find Apple fanboys who explain why that doesn’t matter, that with size of the overall market expanding their sales went up.

The cult of Jobs is dedicated to Apple regardless.

FWIW, I did IT support at a site that had about 400 Macs and 400 Wintel boxes(later transitioning to PCs entirely), I’ve alway liked Apple products and think that their operating systems have always been more user friendly and intuitive than the competition. I have nothing against Apple, I just think a lot of consumers operate on “conventional wisdom” that’s not very wise and make excuses for companies they like that they’d never make for Detroit.

No, you have to think UAW. Germs bank!

John

Anyone who has worked in the corporate world knows what I’m talking about.

I didn’t say anything about who originated the ideas. Some things, like waste waste stream optimization (recycling) are generally from higher up the totem pole (management). Management has to make it happen. Some ideas will come from rank and file, but they seldom are in a position to execute any grand plans.

My perceptions are those of someone who went from operations and worked up to a step below VP in a large corporation (though not automotive). I have friends who do still work in large corporations. Some of them automotive. That’s where I get my coloring.

Big companies are big companies, industry is all but irrelevant. The corporate culture is either efficient or not. GM has plenty of folks in the management org chart who should have had the company figuring out how to not to waste money on electricity, waste, buildouts, etc. Much as I dislke WalMart, they have been on the efficiency path for many years.

“It’s ‘Asian ingenuity’ (or sound business that some of us ‘muricans have always liked to practice) when you do it without a pistol in your mouth. Hammer back. Safety off.”

If you had worked for a foreign based manufacturer as I have you would know that ideas for cost savings are not always generated by the workers. Many of them come down as edicts through management, just as many cost saving ideas come from the line workers in domestic makers. Your perception is colored by the media covereage.

With this method, I bet electronic media, photographs, diskettes, blueprints, audio/video tapes and the like would get extra careful treatment.

Some chinese will pick through abandoned or demolished building for copper wire because they can make a decent amount of money selling the copper. People would also ask me for any cans or plastic bottles I had whenever I went somewhere with a lot of tourists. My dad called it “efficient” that everything got used, because people were so poor.

With this method, I bet electronic media, photographs, diskettes, blueprints, audio/video tapes and the like would get extra careful treatment.

I believe the name for that is a sh1t ticket.

By ‘glossier’ I meant that there was a lack of depth. Good or bad. Biased however it falls.

As to the nobody buys ‘domestics’ thing. Pull out the fleet and the government sales. I won’t even throw in folks that keep one as a company beater to put on a show.

20 years of declining market share would seem to present a convincing set of data points.

Rabid Rick could demonstrate this for the troops.

I wish GM survives through these troubled times and prospers and you have to eat your words.

I agree with you. I also have a suspicion RF wouldn’t mind having to eat his Death Watch Words.

Being “penny wise, pound foolish”, or plucking slivers out of your neighbors eye while ignoring beams in your own eye…whatever metaphor you prefer…is not a reasonable path to survival. It’s a panic, induced when one is required to come up with something when one really has nothing. It deserves ridicule from those of us whose tax money, and economic health, is potentially on the line, and who don’t have the practical option of doing other than ridiculing.

It may be that a reasonable business plan, publicly presented, would suggest that GM’s only realistic option is C11. RF has argued that for quite some time, I’ve reluctantly come around to that view over the last few months. It may be that GM, despite negative shareholder equity in excess of $50B, has other options with which Congress might assist – if so they should present them, and execute them, sooner rather than later. In fact, they should have long since executed them without the need to involve Congress.

I believe I first heard the phrase, “GM isn’t a car company, it’s a health and retirement plan that happens to sell cars” from a GM marketing guy, circa 2002. I’m sure that middle managers of the Detroit 3, or their counterparts at tier 1 vendors, can tell stories that make anything on TTAC look like playground stuff.

I think that’s why Rep. McCotter was so indignant in that video. Folks around Detroit know the problems of the domestic industry better than most. We don’t need to be lectured about restructuring, we could give those lectures.

Nah, they tilt glossy or bleak depending on their bias on that subject.

People are the same. If I said that nobody buys Apple computers people would say that I’m crazy, but Macs only have about 3% of the market for personal computers. If I say that nobody buys American cars, people will nod sagely, ignoring their 55% market share and that GM outsold Toyota last month.

I don’t disagree with him.

One problem with waste is that most folks just don’t see it. Normal procedures are not thought of as waste. Think about the schools or office buildings that have all the lights on one floor on a single circuit. The janitor is cleaning just one room at a time, but all the lights are on.

Waste is like an iceberg, you can’t see the full extent. The money that goes into something that’s wasted can’t be invested in other things.

Paper, for example. When paper is wasted, let’s say by printing unnecessary hard copy drafts, it’s not just the disposal/recycling costs and the cost of replacing that paper. It’s also the capital investment in the office supply room where the paper is stored, the wages of the loading dock personnel who received it, the time of the person in purchasing who ordered it, etc.

When I disposed of a pallet of off-spec paint, the $600/barrel disposal fee was a small fraction of the total cost of the waste.

It’s ‘Asian ingenuity’ (or sound business that some of us ‘muricans have always liked to practice) when you do it without a pistol in your mouth. Hammer back. Safety off.

When you have dozens (hundreds) of folks in your org who should have implemented baby steps like this years ago, you present a screaming easy target for derision.

Love it or hate it, history is being written as we speak. Twenty or thirty years from now, students will seek out the honest informed opinions found places like this. Because the MSM always paints it way glossier than it really is.

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. The day the domestics admit they have institutional problems that most of us have seen clearly for over 30 years, I’ll start believing.

Instead, employees get a less durable and less attractive container and the General’s buying boxes and disposing of trash cans.
(Craigslist Detroit:”CHEEP!! 842,763 office trash canz!!”).

Way to be efficient!

Instead of making fun of GM for trying to save money, people should recognize that it is precisely attention to detail, to rooting out any kind of waste, that is what makes efficient companies profitable.

So it’s an efficiency measure to force employees to walk out of their cubicles over to a centrally-located bin if they have to blow their nose?

Isn’t this centrally located nose-blowing-bin likely to spread disease?

N.B.: I approve of recycling, and live in a county with a 75% solid waste recycling mandate, which I support. This, on the other hand, seems petty.

This is free. Have each employee bring in their own trash bag and clean up their space themselves!
Get rid of those evil cleaning people altogether.

Enough. t

but posting topics like this one is very childish as far as i am concerned.

Also, I do not appreciate the condescension in your comment – “If you actually paid attention to the site and read the posts…”

Anyway, reducing the stream to landfills is a laudible goal and if it saves a few bucks for GM, all the better.

Only when it’s Toyondissandai. Then it’s crafty Asian ingenuity. When it’s GM or Ford it’s just grist for jokes. Obviously this is brought on by the horrible market and I know a lot it’s their own doing. But it’s this kind of mindeset that is needed (well new leadership woun’t hurt either). Now if they can used the same mindset on their factory efficiency and yes, throughout the executive ranks (especially with new leadership) they can save a lot of money. If only our elected officials would have the same mindset.