NUMMI: GM Wrote It Down in 1987. They Still Didn't Get It.

Mark Graban and Jamie Flinchbaugh sit down with single-origin coffees and a 1987 GM Confidential report Mark pulled from the Don Ephlin papers at Wayne State's Reuther Library. The document, "NUMMI Management Practices: Executive Summary," lays out five management strategies behind the joint venture's success and the line that ties them together: "The key to NUMMI's success is not its tools or techniques, but the management philosophy that gives meaning to them." So why couldn't GM replicate it?

Episode page with links and more

Before NUMMI, the conversation runs through:

• Jamie's report from a Lehigh symposium on AI in supply chain (Penske, NFI, Crayola, Sharp Services) and judging Lehigh's entrepreneurial pitch competition
• Mark's two-week run at the LEI Lean Summit in Houston and Shingo Connect in San Diego, plus a regional FIRST robotics competition
• AI in continuous improvement, including Mark's Socratic Lean coach (free 48-hour trial)
• Single-origin coffee: Jamie's Peru from Huabal / San Pablo, Mark's Burundi Cankuzo Province bourbon-variety bean from Elliott Coffee in Dayton, KY (sourced via JNP Coffee), and the power dynamics the fair-trade label doesn't fix
• A Lean Whiskey detour on the rumored Sazerac, Brown-Forman, and Pernod Ricard moves, the bullwhip effect rippling back to a shuttered Kentucky barrel mill, and the cautionary tale of Stroh's (now back, brewed at Brew Detroit)

The main segment works through the NUMMI report's five management strategies, why GM tried to redistribute the original "NUMMI commandos" one at a time, why Toyota deliberately avoided hiring auto-industry people for Georgetown, what NUMMI didn't solve (product design, activist investors, the UAW's missed opening), and where Bob Lutz's Car Guys vs. Bean Counters fits in. Mark also notes the Toyota Way 2001 document still isn't freely available online. Some lessons you have to go find.

To close: Big Mistakes (Dan Levy, Netflix), and, prompted by the Artemis II launch, the case for Apollo 13 and Hidden Figures as the best of the genre.

Resources mentioned:

• NUMMI Management Practices: Executive Summary, January 1987 (Don Ephlin papers, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
• Bob Lutz, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters
• Sweet Maria's green coffee
• Elliott Coffee, Dayton, KY / JNP Coffee
• Brew Detroit (Stroh's)
• Big Mistakes (Netflix)
• Mark's Socratic Lean coach (48-hour free trial)
• Jamie's newsletter (Apollo 13 / strategic problem-solving in flight)