Running the steel at GM Grand Rapids

摘要

The working relationship between General Motors' Grand Rapids Metal Center and its steel supplier has come a long way in the past ten years. "In the late '80s, our mentality was that the steel quality was so bad that, on and given day, one supplier's material might not run, so we'd set that down and run another supplier's material until we found good steel," says Tom McLean, manager of the Grand Rapids, Mich, plant, which blanks, stamps, and fabricates steel. To have plenty to choose from, the plant stored 30-50 days' worth of steel in the '70s. Like other U.S. automakers, GM has several steel suppliers for each vehicle part.In the late 1980s, Donald Smith of the University of Michigan conducted a landmark study in which he found that Honda had a