R.I.P. Nummi

A Nummi, uma das fábricas mais famosas do mundo - e certamente a mais representativa da revolução lean production - está para fechar.

The Meaning of Nummi no Wall Street Journal:

Toyota is not doing away with just any auto factory, but with a landmark joint venture between Toyota and GM until GM bailed this year amid its bankruptcy ordeal. Nummi, short for New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. and born in 1984, was heralded as a way to introduce GM to Japanese-style "lean production" while introducing Toyota to the doughty U.S. auto worker.

Never mind that it never made much money, Nummi starred in countless business school studies as an example of "transformation," "collaboration" and "win-win."

There you have the still-unfolding disaster of the developed world's auto market writ small. Protectionism is never about "saving jobs," but about saving specific jobs of politically useful groups. Ms. Merkel's steps may well cause a blow-up in the EU, given her insistence that Opel's German plants be protected at the expense of plants in Belgium and Spain. Likewise, California is not up for grabs politically, unlike other states where the UAW is powerful. So the union, having already received countless favors from the Obama administration, chooses to spend its ammunition elsewhere, partly because it never liked the Nummi idea of "lean manufacturing" in the first place.