Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

by Jeff Sutherland

The plant was closed by GM in 1982. Management considered the workforce the worst in America. People drank on the job, didn’t show up for work, and subtly sabotaged the cars (by, for example, putting a Coke bottle inside a door, where it would rattle and annoy customers). Toyota reopened the plant in 1984. GM told them about how awful the workers were but that the managers were great and they should rehire them. Instead, Toyota declined to rehire the managers and rehired most of the original workforce—even sent some of them to Japan to learn the Toyota Production System. Almost immediately the NUMMI plant was producing cars with the same precision and as few defects as cars that were produced in Japan. Same people, different system.