A Car Manufacturing Plant that resembles the Guggenheim
Volkswagen built a completely transparent factory in downtown Dresden, Germany, that could double as a art gallery of technology and the future. I honestly do not know enough about car manufacturing plants and how they operate today, but when my brother sent me the following video this morning, it blew me away.
Having grown up at a stone’s throw from the German border in post WorldWar II times, we already knew of the German gene for technology and work attitude. My first car was a (previously owned) 1958 beetle that I drove for 6 months in 1968 without a clutch, because double clutching was cool. (You briefly touched the gas pedal before pulling into neutral, then give the gas one more hit while pulling into the next gear up or down. I did even make a grinding noise.
I just paid $1,200 for a clutch fix on a Chevy Cavalier that had to be towed, because without clutch there is no driving. German technology has always been mindblowing and watching this video, you may realize that this is the result of a culture of hard work and technological ingenuity. Creative thinking finds solutions such as, how to get parts to a plant smack in the center of a busy downtown area. Noisy trucks are not a viable answer, so the solution is found in using the public streetcar tracks for their cargo trams, timed in such a way that traffic hours in public transportation are not affected. Customers can actually see their car being produced or if they want to contribute to the building…they can. Now that is marketing and manufacturing 21st century. Watch the video for many more little jewels of innovation and then marvel at how few people it takes to run a car manufacturing plant these days.
While Germany offers some of the highest paid union jobs in the world, 6 weeks of vacation a year, affordable education, national health care, and still create a growing economy with a positive trade balance, one should honestly wonder why here in the US system we hold on to the notion that our system is better.
If American auto makers want to survive the politics of Washington control, it better return to innovation and creativity, which by the way happens as the result of a corporate culture of achievement in the design ateliers and R&D rooms and typically not on the production floor, no matter the amount of workers thrown at the problem. Germany’s positive trade balance is a resounding proof behind that statement.
The real question here is, when will old industrial Corporate America (GM, Exxon-Mobil etc.) shift its default mindset from government subsidized employment creation, to education and employment by design, pretty much in the way technology Corporate America has already done (Apple, Google etc). Judging from the way GM tries to sneak out of manufacturing responsibilities incurred before they were bailed out by the Obama administration, speaks louder than words.
Now that the car manufacturer operates as a subsidiary of United States Department of The Treasury, it is literally trying to screw more than 400,000 Impala owners (2007-2008 models) out of a legitimate recall-repair claim for a suspension flaw, by alleging that the cars were made by its predecessor General Motors Corp, now called Motors Liquidation Co or “Old GM.”
Apparently no lessons have been learned yet about 21st century accountability and repercussions, as a GM lawyer arrogantly states :”New GM did not assume responsibility for Old GM’s design choices, conduct, or alleged breaches of liability under the warranty.” What about the time and cost of regaining the trust of 400,000 customers and their several million spin offs to ever buy a GM car again?
And that is exactly what is meant with CULTURE. Germans like many Dutch and other Scandinavian countries have a workplace culture that not only precludes disrespect, but also combines loyalty with a clear mutual understanding that working hard has to have benefits for all involved. And the future dictates a open culture of innovation and creativity.
The ME-culture that grew in the US over the past couple of decades until it exploded in 2008, created a culture of distrust and disrespect between employer and employee, with an increasingly overbearing government presence to cloud the issues even more; not a fertile ground for creative solutions.
Transparency has made Western Europe a much better place to live and work in the past 60 years, and in spite of all the media stories we get here about the Eurozone problems with immigration and cultural clashes, the word I get from my family is that Life ain’t bad in a culture that respects tradition, history and progress in equal measures.
I wonder how many Americans are longing for the times when a Volkswagen Beetle cost less than $2,000 and American Ingenuity built a fifth wheel RV for it like in this video. Amazing. Click Here
