Introduction: NUMMI is an acronym for New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. It is the joint venture of General Motors Corporation and Toyota Motor Corporation. It was founded in 1984. Since then, NUMMI has grown to employ 5,500 team members who produce three vehicles: the Toyota Corolla, the Toyota Tacoma and Pontiac Vibe. Throughout its history, NUMMI has worked hard to create a unique corporate culture that borrows from heavily from Toyota's manufacturing processes and quality control programs, as well as expertise from General Motors. NUMMI can manufacture 220,000 cars and 150,000 pickup trucks a year. The plant is known and well respected for its lean manufacturing processes. The plant went from the least productive in plant in North American in 1984 when it was agreed that it would be managed using Japanese management styles. Within five years, NUMMI was as productive as a car manufacturing facility in Japan.
A business problem confronting NUMMI involves its heavy reliance on outside suppliers for raw materials, parts and sub-assemblies. Debi Domby writes in Automotive News (2002) that production was halted for several days because of a component shortage caused by a labor dispute at West Coast ports (Domby, 2002, 42). The business problem NUMMI should consider is whether to seek out alternative sources of supply for every item purchased at the NUMMI facility -- including items imported from foreign countries -- in case there is a similar interruption of deliveries in the future.
There are at least three possible outcomes of the business problem described above. The first is that research would prove that it is possible to find companies that could one day become alternative sources for products purchased by NUMMI, but these vendors would need to expand and invest heavily in capital equipment and infrastructure in order to meet NUMMI's minimum acceptance criteria. A second outcome would be that research would prove ...