General Motors: Life Inside the Factory

This book portrays life inside a General Motors factory in the 1970s. Have you ever wondered why or how the lazy hourly workers came to be that way? This myth is debunked throughout the book. Anyone who has ever worked hourly for General Motors, the big three, or any large manufacturing company will enjoy the experiences provided in this book. They will find themselves reminiscing in the past about their own work experiences. Anyone who has had a close relative that worked in a factory will want to read this book to get a feel of what their loved ones went through while earning a living.

The book comes to the stunning conclusion that General Motors top executives wasted a tremendous amount of human resources over the years. They looked down upon the factory workers and treated them as if they were disposable employees. They never attempted to tap into the vast and almost incalculable amount of brainpower available because they simply dismissed their classification hourly worker as useless. They treated them as if they were the source of all of their problems. They never even considered that with four hundred thousand hourly employees they might have had the resources right in front of them to help in solving the vast and complex problems that exist in the every day world of work.

In todays competitive manufacturing environment Lean Manufacturing has stepped into the forefront for improvement. One of the two pillars of Lean manufacturing is respect for the worker. If youre an executive leader, manager or a student of lean youll want to read this book to see how not to do it. One theory of management says that if you dont like what you see around you go look in a mirror first because your workforce is a reflection of your thinking and actions.