Toyota Readies New Plant in Old Miss
OK, it's a love letter to Toyota, written by a local Mississippi paper pleased as punch that their audience are enjoying the economic uplift provided by a new, $1.3b Toyota factory. But The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal still offers a fascinating look at how ToMoCo gets the party started at a new production facility. "Numerous training sessions at other Toyota sites, including Georgetown, Ky., and San Antonio, are part of the regimen. TMMMS [Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi] employees will spend three weeks or so at one of those facilities, then return home for training at area community colleges for a few weeks. The schedule rotates for a few months until employees are ready to 'graduate.' Then the next batch of employees starts the process again. But the training doesn't stop… Toyota workers are cross-trained to do other jobs. The premise is simple – the more you know, the more you can do, the more valuable you are." Production at the new plant– just outside Elvis' birthplace in Tupelo– begins in late 2009 for the 2010 model year Highlander.
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It'd be interesting to know the number of job classifications at assorted manufacturers' assembly plants. Like Toyota, GM, NUMMI, Ford, Honda... I wonder what the range is?
This is an example of why Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai and BMW will come to be seen as the new domestic auto industry. When the only autoplant for hundreds if not thousands of miles has one of those names on it and a supplier base is built around it, then it will be near impossible to paint Toyota as a "them" and GM as "Us" at least in the south.
Amazing that it's oh so easy to bolt a car together, yet people are lost when comes to trying to perform an oil change.