403: NUMMI - This American Life
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00:00 00:00 Transcript Share This American Life Life Partners How to Listen Episodes Recommended About Overview Staff Announcements Fellowships Jobs Music Make Radio On The Road FAQ Submissions Merch Contact Us Our Other Shows Merch Follow Us Life Partners Subscribe to our newsletter Full episode Toggle Audio and Transcript Sync Transcript | Episode #403 | March 26, 2010 403: NUMMI Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard.
00:00 00:00 文字记录 分享此 美国生活 生活伙伴 如何收听 剧集 推荐 关于 概述 员工公告 奖学金 工作 音乐 在路上制作电台 常见问题解答 提交 商品 联系我们 我们的其他节目 商品 关注我们 生活伙伴 订阅我们的时事通讯 整集 切换音频和文字记录同步 文字记录 | 内容第 403 集 | 2010 年 3 月 26 日 403：NUMMI 注意：《This American Life》是为耳朵而制作的，旨在让人们听到。
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Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
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Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
请在印刷版引用前检查相应的音频。
Prologue Ira Glass Today we have this story for you about cars-- American cars.
序言 Ira Glass 今天我们为您讲述这个关于汽车的故事——美国汽车。
And like most stories about American cars lately, it's more tragedy than comedy, though there is some comedy in there, too.
就像最近大多数有关美国汽车的故事一样，它更多的是悲剧而不是喜剧，尽管其中也有一些喜剧。
It's the story of a factory in California that captures pretty much everything that's gone wrong in the American car business in the last 30 years.
这是加州一家工厂的故事，几乎涵盖了过去 30 年来美国汽车行业出现的所有问题。
And at the heart of the story is the question, why are American cars still not as good as foreign cars?
故事的核心问题是，为什么美国车仍然不如外国车？
Come with me for just a half minute to the Detroit Auto Show, OK?
跟我一起去底特律车展半分钟，好吗？
David Champion is one of the umpires who calls strikes and fouls in the car business.
大卫·钱皮恩 (David Champion) 是汽车界吹罚罢工和犯规的裁判之一。
He's the senior director of Consumer Reports auto test division.
他是《消费者报告》汽车测试部门的高级总监。
He says that Ford has actually been improving for the last six or seven years, but Chrysler's still in the dumps, the worst of all the car makers they study, and as for America's biggest car maker, GM?
他说，福特在过去的六七年里实际上一直在进步，但克莱斯勒仍然处于低迷状态，是他们研究的所有汽车制造商中最差的，至于美国最大的汽车制造商通用汽车呢？
The big Achilles' heel with GM is their reliability.
通用汽车最大的致命弱点是可靠性。
You look at things like the Cadillac CTS-- a fabulous car, I'd take a CTS over a BMW or a Mercedes any day.
你看看像凯迪拉克 CTS 这样的东西——一辆很棒的汽车，我任何一天都会选择 CTS，而不是宝马或奔驰。
But unfortunately, the CTS has been poor for reliability since it was redesigned in 2007.
但不幸的是，自2007年重新设计以来，CTS的可靠性一直很差。
So they still quite haven't got it.
所以他们还没有得到它。
Why hasn't GM got it yet?
为什么GM还没有收到呢？
It's not like this reliability problem just snuck up on them.
这个可靠性问题并不是突然出现在他们身上的。
It's been nearly 50 years since it started losing market share-- 50 years since it began the slide from holding over half the US car market, back in the '60s, to just 22% today.
自从它开始失去市场份额以来，已经过去了近 50 年——从 20 世纪 60 年代占据美国汽车市场一半以上的份额开始下滑到如今的 22%，已经过去了 50 年。
Here's an amazing fact.
这是一个令人惊奇的事实。
Even after Toyota's recent disaster with suddenly accelerating cars that killed possibly 52 people, Consumer Reports came out with new ratings just this month and it still rates Toyota as more reliable than all the American car makers.
即使丰田最近发生了汽车突然加速导致 52 人死亡的灾难，《消费者报告》本月仍发布了新的评级，仍然认为丰田比所有美国汽车制造商都更可靠。
That's because the ratings are based on overall dependability-- the likelihood of whether you'll have a problem with your Toyota, and mostly, they are still very reliable cars.
这是因为评级是基于整体可靠性——您的丰田车是否出现问题的可能性，而且大多数情况下，它们仍然是非常可靠的汽车。
In fact, the top three automakers in the most recent Consumer Reports survey are all Japanese-- Toyota is number three-- and the top 10 are all foreign.
事实上，最近《消费者报告》调查中排名前三的汽车制造商都是日本汽车制造商——丰田排名第三——而前十名都是外国汽车制造商。
Why is it taking so long for Detroit to figure out how to make a car as good as the Japanese?
为什么底特律花了这么长时间才弄清楚如何制造出与日本汽车一样好的汽车？
Well, there's some very interesting answers to that question, and all of them can be found right here-- at a car plant in Fremont, California, called NUMMI.
嗯，这个问题有一些非常有趣的答案，所有这些答案都可以在这里找到——在加利福尼亚州弗里蒙特的一家名为 NUMMI 的汽车工厂。
NUMMI stands for New United Motor Manufacturing Incorporated.
NUMMI 代表新联合汽车制造公司。
A modern car plant, by the way, sounds a lot like a casino.
顺便说一句，现代汽车工厂听起来很像赌场。
The automated gear plays little songs to let you know that it's running.
自动齿轮会播放小歌曲，让您知道它正在运行。
Driver-less robot carts glide up and down the aisles, like R2D2, delivering doors and other parts.
无人驾驶机器人推车像 R2D2 一样在过道上来回滑动，运送门和其他零件。
Their song is supposed to warn you that they're coming.
他们的歌应该是警告你他们来了。
The story of this factory is a famous one among car people-- it's taught at business schools.
这家工厂的故事在汽车界广为流传——商学院里有讲授。
NUMMI was opened in 1984 by GM and Toyota together, who decided this would be a place that they would build cars with each other.
NUMMI 由通用汽车和丰田于 1984 年共同开设，双方决定在这里共同制造汽车。
If it seems strange to you that two competitors would do this, it seemed strange at the time, also.
如果你觉得两个竞争对手会这样做很奇怪，那么在当时也很奇怪。
A headline in Car and Driver about the partnership read, "Hell Freezes Over." But both companies had their reasons-- we'll get into that.
《汽车与司机》杂志关于此次合作的标题是“地狱结冰”。但这两家公司都有自己的理由——我们将对此进行探讨。
At NUMMI, Toyota showed GM all its secrets-- exactly how it made some of the best built, most reliable cars in the world back then.
在 NUMMI 上，丰田向通用汽车展示了它的所有秘密——确切地说，它是如何制造出当时世界上最好的、最可靠的汽车的。
GM hoped to take these lessons from NUMMI and carry them into all their other plants, all over the country, and all over the world.
通用汽车希望从 NUMMI 汲取这些经验教训，并将其推广到全国乃至世界各地的所有其他工厂。
And then, well, that didn't go so well, and here we are today.
然后，嗯，进展不太顺利，我们今天就到这里了。
GM went bankrupt.
通用汽车破产了。
US taxpayers-- you and I-- bailed them out for $50 billion.
美国纳税人——你和我——斥资 500 亿美元救助了他们。
And next week, the NUMMI car plant, the one that seemed like it might be able to teach American car makers how to catch up to their competitors, is going to stop making cars.
下周，NUMMI 汽车工厂将停止生产汽车，这家工厂似乎能够教会美国汽车制造商如何赶上竞争对手。
It's happening, no joke, on April Fools' Day.
不是开玩笑，这件事发生在愚人节。
Today we have a special story for you.
今天我们为您讲述一个特别的故事。
We are devoting our entire show to it.
我们将整个节目奉献给它。
For the last couple months, NPR's automotive correspondent, Frank Langfitt and one of our producers, Brian Reed, have been traveling around the country talking to GM workers and managers about what happened at NUMMI, and especially about what went wrong at GM that it had so much trouble for so long adopting the techniques it learned over a quarter century ago.
在过去的几个月里，NPR 的汽车记者 Frank Langfitt 和我们的制作人之一 Brian Reed 一直在全国各地与通用汽车的员工和经理谈论 NUMMI 发生的事情，特别是通用汽车出了什么问题，以至于它在采用 25 多年前学到的技术时遇到了如此多的麻烦。
General Motors and the UAW are secretive cultures, but as you'll hear, people were blunt when they talked to Frank-- blunt in a way that you rarely hear with auto executives and UAW reps when they're being interviewed by the press.
通用汽车和美国汽车工人联合会都是秘密文化，但正如你所听到的，人们在与弗兰克交谈时很直率——这种直率是你在汽车高管和美国汽车工人联合会代表接受媒体采访时很少听到的。
Act one of our show is about the rise of NUMMI, act two is about what prevented GM from learning from NUMMI.
我们的节目第一幕是关于 NUMMI 的崛起，第二幕是关于阻止 GM 向 NUMMI 学习的原因。
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International.
这是来自芝加哥 WBEZ 的《This American Life》，由国际公共广播电台发行。
I'm Ira Glass.
我是艾拉·格拉斯。
Our show today produced with our colleagues at NPR News.
我们今天的节目与 NPR 新闻的同事一起制作。
And now it is my pleasure to turn the story over to NPR automotive correspondent, Frank Langfitt.
现在我很高兴将这个故事转交给 NPR 汽车记者 Frank Langfitt。
When NUMMI was conceived, General Motors was far and away the world's largest car company.
当 NUMMI 诞生时，通用汽车无疑是世界上最大的汽车公司。
Its US market share was seven times that of Toyota.
其美国市场份额是丰田的七倍。
But each company had a problem that the other company could help them solve.
但每家公司都有一个其他公司可以帮助他们解决的问题。
On GM's side, the problem was small cars.
在通用汽车方面，问题出在小型汽车上。
Under government emissions guidelines, General Motors had to build them, but they'd always lost money for GM, and they were lousy quality.
根据政府的排放指导方针，通用汽车必须建造它们，但它们总是让通用汽车赔钱，而且它们的质量很差。
So Toyota suggested a joint venture that offered two things.
因此，丰田建议成立一家合资企业，该合资企业可以提供两种服务。
First, Toyota would build a quality small car for GM-- one that would finally turn a profit.
首先，丰田将为通用汽车制造一款优质小型汽车——一款最终能够盈利的汽车。
And the second thing was, we have this thing called the Toyota production system, and it produces the quality you see.
第二件事是，我们有一个叫做丰田生产系统的东西，它生产出你所看到的质量。
We can teach you the Toyota production system.
我们可以教您丰田生产系统。
Jeffrey Liker is a professor of industrial engineering at the University of Michigan.
杰弗里·莱克 (Jeffrey Liker) 是密歇根大学工业工程教授。
He wrote The Toyota Way, and he's been studying Japanese auto manufacturing-- including NUMMI-- since the 1980s.
他撰写了《丰田之路》，并且自 20 世纪 80 年代以来一直在研究日本汽车制造（包括 NUMMI）。
He says even though Toyota was offering GM something quite remarkable-- to teach a competitor its secrets, to show them exactly how Toyota achieved such phenomenal reliability-- GM wasn't that interested.
他说，尽管丰田为通用汽车提供了一些非常了不起的东西——向竞争对手传授其秘密，向他们展示丰田如何实现如此惊人的可靠性——但通用汽车并没有那么感兴趣。
Some people in GM I think had some foresight to realize this is important.
我认为通用汽车的一些人有远见，认识到这一点很重要。
I think for many of the senior leaders, it was more, OK, well, maybe I'll learn something, maybe I won't, but it won't hurt.
我认为对于许多高级领导者来说，更多的是，好吧，好吧，也许我会学到一些东西，也许我不会，但这不会有什么坏处。
Why wouldn't they be really interested in the Toyota production system, because at that point, wasn't Toyota building higher quality cars?
为什么他们对丰田的生产系统不真正感兴趣，因为那时丰田不是在生产更高质量的汽车吗？
Toyota was building higher quality cars.
丰田正在制造更高质量的汽车。
I'm not sure it was 100% accepted at that time by senior management that Japanese quality was really better.
我不确定当时的高级管理层是否 100% 接受日本质量真的更好。
Why?
为什么？
Jeffrey Liker I think there was pride and defensiveness.
杰弗里·莱克（Jeffrey Liker）我认为有自豪感和防御性。
I'm proud because I'm the biggest automaker in the world, I've been the best, I've dominated the market.
我很自豪，因为我是世界上最大的汽车制造商，我是最好的，我主导了市场。
You can't teach me anything, you little Japanese company.
你不能教我任何东西，你这个日本小公司。
I'm John Shook.
我是约翰·舒克。
Toyota in Toyota City was completely Japanese when I joined them.
当我加入丰田城的丰田公司时，他们完全是日本人。
I was the first non Japanese to join them as a regular employee in Toyota City.
我是丰田市第一个作为正式员工加入他们的非日本人。
John Shook moved to Japan in the early 1980s because of his fascination with Japanese management techniques.
由于对日本管理技术的着迷，约翰·舒克 (John Shook) 在 20 世纪 80 年代初移居日本。
He read books about them back home in east Tennessee.
他在田纳西州东部的家乡读了有关他们的书籍。
And he decided to fly halfway around the globe, learn to speak the language, and hunt for a job with the biggest Japanese company that would have him.
他决定飞越半个地球，学习说这种语言，并在能够雇用他的最大的日本公司寻找一份工作。
Toyota hired him to train American workers in the joint venture.
丰田聘请他来培训合资企业的美国工人。
Now, here was the problem that pushed Toyota into the deal.
现在，正是这个问题促使丰田加入了这项交易。
They needed to learn how to build cars in America.
他们需要学习如何在美国制造汽车。
For years, the Japanese had been winning away customers from Detroit, and the US Congress was threatening to restrict car imports.
多年来，日本人一直在从底特律夺走客户，而美国国会则威胁要限制汽车进口。
Toyota could avoid that by making cars in the US.
丰田可以通过在美国生产汽车来避免这种情况。
But they wanted a partner.
但他们想要一个合作伙伴。
Here's John Shook.
请听约翰·舒克的报道。
Toyota was looking specifically for things they could learn.
丰田专门寻找他们可以学习的东西。
How can we work with American workers?
我们如何与美国工人合作？
How can we make sure that our management system can work in North America?
如何确保我们的管理体系能够在北美发挥作用？
And they'd been pretty happy just producing in Toyota City, doing a very good job, and the idea of actually taking their system and producing outside of Toyota City was scary to them.
他们对在丰田城生产感到非常高兴，做得非常好，而实际上采用他们的系统并在丰田城之外进行生产的想法对他们来说是可怕的。
Toyota was right to be scared.
丰田的担心是有道理的。
Compared to Japan, where auto workers and management worked together, labor relations in America were more like war.
与汽车工人和管理层合作的日本相比，美国的劳资关系更像是战争。
And at the GM plant in Fremont, it felt at times like hand to hand combat.
在弗里蒙特的通用汽车工厂，有时感觉就像是肉搏战。
A former running back from the University of Arkansas named Bruce Lee ran the western region for the United Auto Workers, and was in charge of the Fremont Union Local 1364.
阿肯色大学的前跑卫李小龙负责美国汽车工人联合会的西部地区工作，并负责弗里蒙特联盟当地 1364 组织。
Now normally, somebody like Bruce Lee is supposed to defend his union members no matter what.
现在通常情况下，像李小龙这样的人无论如何都应该捍卫他的工会成员。
But even he says they were awful.
但就连他也说它们很糟糕。
It was considered the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States.
他们被认为是美国汽车行业最差的劳动力。
And it was a reputation that was well earned.
这是来之不易的声誉。
Everything was a fight.
一切都是一场战斗。
They spent more time on grievances and on things like that than they did on producing cars.
他们花在抱怨和类似事情上的时间比生产汽车的时间还要多。
They had strikes all the time.
他们一直在罢工。
It was just chaos constantly.
这只是不断的混乱。
The Fremont, California plant for General Motors was bad by GM standards, and GM's average was bad by Toyota standards, so this is the worst among the bad mediocre plants in GM.
通用汽车位于加州弗里蒙特的工厂按照通用汽车公司的标准来看很差，而通用汽车公司的平均水平按照丰田公司的标准来看也很差，所以这是通用汽车公司最差的平庸工厂中最差的一个。
Again, that's Jeffrey Liker, who's interviewed workers and management at Fremont for his research.
杰弗里·莱克（Jeffrey Liker）再次为他的研究采访了弗里蒙特的工人和管理层。
One of the expressions was, you can buy anything you want in the GM plant in Fremont.
其中一种说法是，你可以在弗里蒙特的通用汽车工厂购买任何你想要的东西。
If you want sex, if you want drugs, if you want alcohol, it's there.
如果你想要性，如果你想要毒品，如果你想要酒精，它就在那里。
During breaks, during lunch time, if you want to gamble illegally-- any illegal activity was available for the asking within that plant.
休息时间、午餐时间，如果你想非法赌博——任何非法活动都可以在那个工厂内询问。
Sounds like prison.
听起来像监狱。
Jeffrey Liker Actually the analogy to prison is a good analogy.
杰弗里·莱克（Jeffrey Liker） 实际上，用监狱来比喻是一个很好的比喻。
Because the workers were stuck there, because they could not find anything close to that level of job, and pay, and benefits, at their level of education and skill.
因为工人们被困在那里，因为他们找不到任何与他们的教育和技能水平相近的工作、工资和福利。
So they were trapped there.
所以他们就被困在那里了。
And they also felt like, we have a job for life, and the union will always protect us.
他们还觉得，我们有一份终生的工作，工会将永远保护我们。
So we're stuck here, and it's long term, and then all these illegal things crop up so we can entertain ourselves while we're stuck here.
所以我们被困在这里，这是长期的，然后所有这些非法的事情都会突然出现，这样我们就可以在被困在这里的时候自娱自乐。
A lot of booze on the line.
大量的酒就行了。
I mean, it was just amazing-- and as long as you did your job, they really didn't care.
我的意思是，这真是太棒了——只要你做好你的工作，他们真的不在乎。
What kind of booze, what were people drinking?
人们喝的是什么样的酒？
Whiskey, gin.
威士忌、杜松子酒。
Frank Langfitt That's Rick Madrid.
弗兰克·朗菲特 那是里克·马德里。
He began working at the plant in 1955.
他于 1955 年开始在工厂工作。
He mounted tires on Chevy trucks.
他在雪佛兰卡车上安装轮胎。
When I was mounting tires, we'd drink.
当我安装轮胎时，我们会喝酒。
You know, I'd bring a thermos of screwdrivers with me.
你知道，我会随身携带一瓶螺丝刀。
But I never was into drugs.
但我从来不吸毒。
I wasn't that fortunate.
我就没那么幸运了。
Peter Ross There was a guy in there, he would be selling the pot.
Peter Ross 那里有一个人，他会卖掉锅。
Peter Ross repaired machinery on the assembly line at GM.
彼得·罗斯在通用汽车的装配线上修理机器。
I'd be walking through the plant with my tools and my radio.
我会带着工具和收音机在工厂里走来走去。
You see a big cloud of smoke, you don't want to inhale it, you'd get a contact high.
你看到一大团烟雾，你不想吸入它，因为你会接触到高浓度的烟雾。
If you're wondering how people kept their jobs, well, back then the UAW was still quite powerful.
如果你想知道人们是如何保住工作的，那么，当时美国汽车工人联合会仍然相当强大。
Under the union contract, it was almost impossible to fire anybody, and if management ticked off the union, workers could just shut the plant down in minutes.
根据工会合同，解雇任何人几乎是不可能的，如果管理层不同意工会的要求，工人们可以在几分钟内关闭工厂。
With that sort of leverage, absenteeism became absurd.
有了这种影响力，缺勤就变得荒谬了。
On a normal day, one out of five workers just didn't show up.
正常的一天，五分之一的工人没有出现。
It was even worse on Mondays.
周一情况更糟。
Billy Haggerty worked in hood and fender assembly.
比利·哈格蒂（Billy Haggerty）负责引擎盖和挡泥板的组装工作。
He says so few workers showed up some mornings, management couldn't start the line.
他说，有些早上来的工人太少，管理层无法启动生产线。
They brought a lot of people off the street to fill in when they didn't have enough people.
当人手不够的时候，他们从街上带了很多人来填补。
Who would they find?
他们会找到谁？
Billy Haggerty Right across the street to the bar and grab people out of there and bring them in.
比利·哈格蒂（Billy Haggerty）就在街对面的酒吧，把人从那里抓出来并带进来。
Workers filed grievances-- formal complaints against management-- over all kinds of things.
工人们就各种各样的事情提出申诉——对管理层的正式投诉。
Someone who isn't your boss asks you to clean something up?
非你老板的人要求你清理一些东西？
Hit him with a grievance.
一脸委屈地打他。
A manager steps in to do a job that isn't his?
经理介入去做不属于他的工作？
Grievance.
委屈。
The strategy was simple.
策略很简单。
Pile up grievances real or imagined by the thousands, then use them to squeeze money or concessions out of management.
将成千上万的真实或想象的不满堆积起来，然后利用它们从管理层中榨取金钱或做出让步。
And Fremont workers struck back at their bosses in other ways.
弗里蒙特的工人还以其他方式反击他们的老板。
They'd intentionally screw up the vehicles.
他们故意搞砸车辆。
Put coke bottles or loose bolts inside the door panels so they'd rattle and annoy the customer.
将可乐瓶或松动的螺栓放在门板内，这样它们就会发出嘎嘎声并惹恼顾客。
They'd scratch cars.
他们会刮伤汽车。
Richard Aguilar inspected vehicles at the plant.
理查德·阿吉拉尔在工厂检查车辆。
He saw one guy do something even worse.
他看到一个人做了更糟糕的事情。
He left some loose bolts on the front suspension.
他在前悬架上留下了一些松动的螺栓。
That was dangerous.
那很危险。
I went and told the system manager right away.
我立即去告诉系统管理员。
They went out there and they checked, and there was like 400 cars he had done that to.
他们出去检查了一下，大约有 400 辆汽车被他这么做了。
He was mad because they had suspended him for drinking.
他很生气，因为他们因他酗酒而停职。
By 1982, GM had had enough and put the Fremont factory out of its misery.
到 1982 年，通用汽车已经受够了，让弗里蒙特工厂摆脱了困境。
The company laid off thousands of workers and closed the plant.
该公司解雇了数千名工人并关闭了工厂。
The next year, when GM and Toyota began planning to reopen the plant for the joint venture, there was one thing neither company wanted to do-- hire the same union leaders who'd battled management and overseen GM's worst workforce.
第二年，当通用汽车和丰田开始计划为合资企业重新开设工厂时，两家公司都不愿意做一件事——雇用那些曾与管理层斗争并监督通用汽车最差员工的工会领导人。
Then the UAW's Bruce Lee sat down with chairman Eiji Toyoda.
随后美国汽车工人联合会的李小龙与董事长丰田英二进行了座谈。
And one of the first things I said is, "I've got to hire the first 50 people."
我说的第一句话就是，“我必须雇用前 50 名员工。”
So who did you hire?
那么你雇用了谁？
Bruce Lee The same leadership that was in the union before.
李小龙 与之前在工会中的领导层相同。
Why?
为什么？
I thought you would try to get rid of them.
我以为你会尝试摆脱它们。
No, no, because I believed that it was the system that made it bad, not the people.
不，不，因为我相信是制度造成了这种情况，而不是人。
GM was against it, but incredibly, Toyota agreed.
通用汽车反对，但令人难以置信的是，丰田同意了。
Toyota execs believed their system would turn bad workers into good ones.
丰田高管相信他们的系统可以把坏工人变成好工人。
Then Lee had to sell the plan to the rank and file.
然后李不得不向普通民众推销这个计划。
He held a meeting and told union members that Fremont would now be a Japanese style plant.
他召开了一次会议，告诉工会成员，弗里蒙特现在将成为一家日式工厂。
Old seniority rules wouldn't apply, life at the plant would be totally different.
旧的资历规则不再适用，工厂的生活将完全不同。
The workers hated all this.
工人们痛恨这一切。
They didn't want anything changed.
他们不希望有任何改变。
They wanted the plant to open exactly how it was when General Motors had it.
他们希望工厂按照通用汽车公司建时的样子开业。
Bad cars and all?
坏车等等？
Bruce Lee That's what they wanted.
李小龙 这就是他们想要的。
They even hung Lee in effigy.
他们甚至还给李悬挂了肖像。
But Lee had something very powerful on his side-- most of the workers desperately needed jobs, and Lee had them.
但李身边有一些非常强大的东西——大多数工人迫切需要工作，而李拥有这些工作。
When NUMMI opened, over 85% of the workforce were old hands from GM Fremont.
当 NUMMI 开业时，超过 85% 的员工都是通用汽车弗里蒙特公司的老员工。
But to prepare them for that moment, in the spring of 1984, Toyota started flying them to Japan in groups of 30 to begin learning the Toyota system for making cars.
但为了让他们做好准备，1984 年春天，丰田开始将他们以 30 人为一组飞往日本，开始学习丰田汽车制造系统。
Well, when the NUMMI workers first came to Japan, me, and certainly my Japanese bosses, had heard all these horrible things about the American worker, about the American union.
好吧，当 NUMMI 工人第一次来到日本时，我，当然还有我的日本老板，都听说过有关美国工人和美国工会的所有这些可怕的事情。
As the one American working in Toyota City, John Shook helped design this training.
作为在丰田市工作的美国人，约翰·舒克 (John Shook) 帮助设计了这项培训。
We had certainly heard all these stories about the workforce there at the Fremont plant.
我们当然听说过有关弗里蒙特工厂员工的所有这些故事。
And it was our job to show them a new, very different way of working.
我们的工作就是向他们展示一种全新的、截然不同的工作方式。
What would they do?
他们会做什么？
How would they respond to this?
他们对此有何反应？
How would they react?
他们会如何反应？
And no one knew.
没有人知道。
I didn't know.
我不知道。
So everyone was very, very nervous.
所以大家都非常非常紧张。
I was kind of apprehensive about what I was going to see when I arrived in Japan.
当我到达日本时，我对自己将要看到的东西感到有点担心。
On one of those planes was Earl Ferguson.
其中一架飞机上坐着厄尔·弗格森。
He'd been working for GM since 1964.
他自 1964 年以来一直为通用汽车工作。
Whether they were going to accept us or not, you know.
无论他们是否会接受我们，你都知道。
How they're going to react when the Americans landed in Tokyo.
当美国人登陆东京时他们将如何反应。
Everything was so new to us, you know, this is just a totally new experience.
一切对我们来说都是那么新鲜，你知道，这只是一次全新的体验。
So I will never forget-- Frank Langfitt Again, John Shook.
所以我永远不会忘记——弗兰克·朗菲特（Frank Langfitt） 又是约翰·舒克（John Shook）。
Taking a bus, a large bus, with my small group of Japanese colleagues to pick up the first group of trainees arriving from Fremont.
和我的一小群日本同事一起乘坐公共汽车，一辆大型公共汽车，去接第一批从弗里蒙特抵达的学员。
Television cameras were there because this was big news in Japan at the time.
电视摄像机在那里，因为这在当时的日本是个大新闻。
[SPEAKING JAPANESE] John Shook As they got off the plane, we had signs welcoming them.
[说日语] 约翰·舒克 (John Shook) 当他们下飞机时，我们看到了欢迎他们的标语。
The news media was everywhere.
新闻媒体无处不在。
We were signing autographs and taking pictures with all the young kids.
我们与所有的孩子们签名并合影。
Totally new experience.
全新的体验。
Most of them had never been out of the United States before.
他们中的大多数人以前从未离开过美国。
None of them, certainly, had ever been to Japan.
当然，他们中没有人去过日本。
My name is Les Myers.
我的名字是莱斯·迈尔斯。
I've worked at General Motors for 25 years.
我在通用汽车公司工作了 25 年。
My hobbies are fishing and bowling.
我的爱好是钓鱼和打保龄球。
My name is [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE].
我的名字是[难以理解的短语]。
My hobby's softball.
我的爱好是垒球。
The narrator in this Japanese public television program points out that the American worker is nine years older than his Toyota trainer.
日本公共电视节目的解说员指出，这名美国工人比他的丰田教练员大九岁。
He also notes for his Japanese viewers that the Americans are so much larger than the Japanese they waste a second or two more each time they get in and out of the vehicles they're building, which makes them 10 to 15% less productive than their Asian counterparts.
他还向日本观众指出，美国人比日本人大得多，他们每次进出他们正在建造的车辆时都会多浪费一两秒钟，这使得他们的生产力比亚洲同行低 10% 到 15%。
The key to the Toyota production system was a principle so basic it sounds like an empty management slogan-- teamwork.
丰田生产系统的关键是一个听起来像一句空洞的管理口号的基本原则——团队合作。
Back home in Fremont, GM supervisors ordered around large groups of workers.
回到弗里蒙特的家乡，通用汽车的主管命令大批工人围观。
The Takaoka plant, people were divided into teams of just four or five-- switch jobs every few hours to relieve the monotony.
在高冈工厂，人们被分成四五个人的小组——每隔几个小时就换一次工作，以缓解单调的气氛。
And a team leader would step in to help whenever anything went wrong.
每当出现问题时，团队领导都会介入提供帮助。
Again, Professor Jeffrey Liker and Toyota's John Shook.
再次是 Jeffrey Liker 教授和丰田公司的 John Shook。
And they spent about two weeks, and they worked in a Toyota plant.
他们在丰田工厂工作了大约两周。
Hooked up at the hip with a counterpart in the Corolla plant-- someone who did the exact same job you would be doing back in Fremont.
与卡罗拉工厂的一位同行密切合作——他的工作与你在弗里蒙特所做的工作完全相同。
And they start to do the job, and they were pretty proud because they were building cars back in the United States, and they wanted to show they could do it within the time allotted, and they would usually get behind.
他们开始做这项工作，他们非常自豪，因为他们在美国制造汽车，他们想证明他们可以在分配的时间内完成这项工作，而且他们通常会落后。
And they would struggle, and they would try to catch up, and at some point, somebody would come over and say, do you want me to help?
他们会挣扎，他们会努力追赶，在某个时候，有人会过来问，你需要我帮忙吗？
And that was a revelation, because nobody in the GM plant would ever ask to help.
这是一个启示，因为通用汽车工厂里没有人会寻求帮助。
They would come yell at you because you got behind.
他们会因为你落后而对你大喊大叫。
Really, we wanted to give them a chance to see and experience a different way of doing things.
确实，我们想让他们有机会看到和体验不同的做事方式。
We wanted them to see the culture there, the way people work together to solve problems.
我们希望他们看到那里的文化，以及人们共同解决问题的方式。
Then the biggest surprise was, when they had those problems, afterwards, somebody would come up to them and say, what are your ideas for improvement so we don't have that problem again?
然后最大的惊喜是，当他们遇到这些问题时，之后就会有人过来问他们，你有什么改进的想法，这样我们就不会再遇到这个问题了？
So they'd make suggestions for a different kind of tool that would be better for the job, or a different place for bolts and parts to sit that would be easier to reach.
因此，他们会建议使用一种更适合这项工作的不同类型的工具，或者选择一个更容易够到的螺栓和零件的不同位置。
They couldn't believe that responsiveness.
他们不敢相信这种反应能力。
I can't remember anytime in my working life where anybody asked for my ideas to solve the problem.
我不记得在我的工作生涯中任何时候有人询问我解决问题的想法。
And they literally want to know, and when I tell them, they listen, and then suddenly, they disappear and somebody comes back with the tool that I just described-- it's built-- and they say, "Try this."
他们确实想知道，当我告诉他们时，他们会听，然后突然间，他们消失了，有人带着我刚才描述的工具回来了——它已经建成了——他们说，“试试这个。”
Under the Toyota system, when a worker makes a suggestion that saves money, he gets a bonus of a few hundred dollars or so.
在丰田的制度下，当工人提出省钱的建议时，他会得到几百美元左右的奖金。
Everyone's expected to be looking for ways to improve the production process, all the time.
每个人都希望一直在寻找改进生产流程的方法。
This is the Japanese concept of kaizen, or continuous improvement.
这就是日本的“kaizen”概念，即持续改进。
And if you look around a Toyota plant, you can see the result of all those improvements.
如果你环顾一下丰田工厂，你就能看到所有这些改进的结果。
You see mats for workers to stand on, special cushions they throw into the car frames when they have to kneel inside, hanging shelves that travel along with the car and the worker, carrying parts and bolts they need within easy reach.
你会看到供工人站立的垫子，当他们不得不跪在车内时扔进车架的特殊垫子，与汽车和工人一起移动的悬挂架子，将他们需要的零件和螺栓放在触手可及的地方。
Similarly, workers tasks have been streamlined to the fewest possible steps, each step timed down to the second.
同样，工作人员的任务也被简化为尽可能少的步骤，每个步骤的时间都缩短到了秒。
Two seconds to pick up a bolt and put it on.
两秒钟拿起一个螺栓并将其安装上。
Two seconds to take a gun and tighten it down.
两秒钟拿枪并拧紧。
Billy Haggerty learned the Japanese system two decades into his tenure at GM Fremont.
比利·哈格蒂在弗里蒙特通用汽车公司任职二十年后，就了解了日本的体系。
Everything was timed out, such and such takes such and such long to do-- that's the way you did it.
一切都超时了，如此这般需要如此如此的时间才能完成——这就是你所做的。
At General Motors, you could be running in circles for whatever you were doing, and that's the way it is.
在通用汽车公司，无论你在做什么，你都可能会原地踏步，事实就是这样。
You lose time.
你会失去时间。
A car a minute don't seem like it's moving that fast, but when you don't get it, you're in the hole.
一分钟一辆车看起来并没有开得那么快，但当你没有意识到这一点时，你就陷入困境了。
There's nobody to pull you out at General Motors, so you're going to let something go.
在通用汽车公司没有人可以把你拉出来，所以你会放弃一些东西。
All those mistakes added up at a GM plant, and the results were littered around the lots outside-- hundreds of misassembled cars.
所有这些错误在通用汽车工厂加起来，结果散落在外面的停车场——数百辆组装错误的汽车。
Cars that came off the line missing parts.
下线的汽车缺少零件。
Cars that needed to be fixed before they could be shipped out to the dealers.
在运送给经销商之前需要修理的汽车。
In a Toyota plant, there was nothing like this.
在丰田工厂里，没有这样的事情。
Why did a GM plant produce so many screwed up cars?
为什么通用汽车工厂生产出这么多破烂的汽车？
One cardinal rule that everybody in the company knew.
公司每个人都知道的一条基本规则。
The line could never stop.
队伍永远无法停止。
Never stop the line.
永远不要停止这条线。
Again, Billy Haggerty, Jeffrey Liker, Rick Madrid, and Bruce Lee.
再次是比利·哈格蒂、杰弗里·莱克、里克·马德里和李小龙。
Someone had a heart attack, kick him out the way, keep that line running.
有人心脏病发作，把他踢开，让线路继续运行。
It was a basic sin.
这是一种基本的罪过。
You're violating the 10 commandments.
你违反了十诫。
You just don't see the line stop.
你只是看不到线路停止。
I saw a guy fall in the pit and they didn't stop the line.
我看到一个人掉进坑里，他们没有阻止队伍。
You saw a problem, you stop that line, you were fired.
你发现了问题，你停止了这条线，你就被解雇了。
A long time GM manager named Ernie Schaefer explained why.
一位名叫厄尼·谢弗（Ernie Schaefer）的长期担任通用汽车经理的人解释了原因。
Because the theory was, they'll stop it all the time.
因为理论上来说，他们会一直阻止它。
They don't want to work, you know, they want to sit and play cards or whatever.
他们不想工作，你知道，他们想坐下来打牌什么的。
You know, that was a free break for them, if the line stops, so you wouldn't give them the ability to stop the line.
你知道，如果队伍停止了，这对他们来说是一次自由休息，所以你不会给他们停止队伍的能力。
John Shook, the American who helped Toyota design its training program, says this all goes back to the first assembly line created by Henry Ford.
帮助丰田设计培训计划的美国人约翰·舒克 (John Shook) 表示，这一切都可以追溯到亨利·福特 (Henry Ford) 创建的第一条装配线。
What Henry Ford had basically designed was a system that-- he wanted the people on the floor to simply get the volume out, get the product out the door, and someone later will worry about the quality.
亨利·福特基本上设计的是一个系统——他希望现场的人们简单地把产量拿出来，把产品拿出来，然后有人会担心质量。
If we have to repair it, we'll repair it.
如果我们必须修复它，我们就会修复它。
So one of the most fundamental things that Toyota did was take that and turn it on its head.
因此，丰田所做的最基本的事情之一就是彻底改变这一点。
So that now we tell the plant floor, don't you worry about the production volume, you worry about quality.
所以现在我们告诉工厂车间，你们不用担心产量，你们担心质量。
The last thing we want is to have a lot of defects flowing down the line that we have to repair later.
我们最不想看到的就是生产线上出现大量缺陷，而我们必须稍后进行修复。
Toyota's philosophy was quality, not quantity.
丰田的理念是质量，而不是数量。
In his old GM job, Billy Haggerty put on hoods and fenders, and saw lots of mistakes go right down the line.
比利·哈格蒂（Billy Haggerty）在他以前的通用汽车工作中，安装了引擎盖和挡泥板，并看到了很多错误。
So we had Monte Carlos with Regal front ends, and vice versa, and they would just stick it on, run it out to the yard, and then change.
所以我们有带有Regal前端的蒙特卡洛斯，反之亦然，他们只是把它粘上，把它跑到院子里，然后改变。
Half Regals and half-- so those things would go out the door into the yard and be fixed out there.
一半是帝王，一半是——所以那些东西会从门出去到院子里，然后在那里修好。
I did a lot of overtime in the yard changing things back.
我在院子里加班了很多次，把东西改回来。
Workers told me they saw cars with engines put in backwards, cars without steering wheels or brakes.
工人们告诉我，他们看到了发动机向后安装的汽车，没有方向盘或制动器的汽车。
Some were so messed up they wouldn't start, and had to be towed off the line.
有些太乱了，无法启动，不得不被拖下线。
Fixing them piled on more costs, and sometimes, taking them apart and putting them back together, workers damaged them even more.
修理它们会增加更多的成本，有时，将它们拆开再重新组装起来，工人们会造成更大的损坏。
On the floor of the NUMMI plant in Fremont, Earl Ferguson showed me Toyota's solution to all this.
在弗里蒙特 NUMMI 工厂的地板上，Earl Ferguson 向我展示了丰田针对这一切的解决方案。
It's a thin nylon rope that hangs on hooks along the assembly line, which became a symbol of everything that was different about the Japanese way of making cars-- the andon cord.
这是一根细尼龙绳，挂在装配线上的钩子上，它成为日本汽车制造方式所有不同之处的象征——安灯绳。
These cords hanging down, that's the andon cord.
这些垂下来的绳子，就是安灯绳。
It will stop the line.
它将停止线路。
If he pulls the andon cord, then this light's going to come on, right here.
如果他拉动安灯绳，那么这里的灯就会亮起。
Then it'll show up on the screen that this location is down.
然后屏幕上会显示该位置已关闭。
It also plays a surprisingly cheerful little song.
它还播放一首令人惊讶的欢快小曲。
Workers in each area can pick the tune.
每个区域的工作人员都可以选择曲调。
You hear it all the time in a Toyota plant.
在丰田工厂里你总能听到这种声音。
The first pull doesn't stop the line, it summons team leaders to the location.
第一次拉动不会停止队伍，它会召唤团队领导到该位置。
They try to correct the problem, and usually, they can do it quickly without stopping production.
他们尝试纠正问题，通常可以在不停止生产的情况下快速完成。
But if they fail, the line stops.
但如果他们失败了，队伍就会停止。
Then they'll correct the problem, then you can pull the andon cord again, and the line will start.
然后他们会纠正问题，然后您可以再次拉动安灯线，线路就会启动。
Now when was the first time you ever pulled an andon cord?
现在，您第一次拉安灯绳是什么时候？
1984.
1984年。
Frank Langfitt Where did you do it?
弗兰克·朗菲特 你在哪里做的？
In Japan.
在日本。
Frank Langfitt Were you at all nervous, because you'd been taught for so many years never to stop the line?
弗兰克·朗菲特（Frank Langfitt）：你是否感到紧张，因为多年来你一直被教导永远不要停下来？
Yeah.
是的。
And it was really exciting.
这真的很令人兴奋。
What got me was the fact that they had a cross bolt, and they stopped the line to repair it.
让我震惊的是他们有一个十字螺栓，他们停下来修理它。
Ream the hole, put the bolt back in, instead of sending it on and putting all the other junk on top of it, so you have to take it off and repair it.
铰孔，把螺栓放回去，而不是把它送上来，然后把所有其他垃圾放在上面，所以你必须把它取下来修理。
And whoever puts it back isn't skilled in putting trim back, so they're going to mess that up.
不管是谁把它放回去，都不擅长把装饰放回去，所以他们会把事情搞砸的。
That impressed me.
这让我印象深刻。
Said, gee, that makes sense, fix it now so you don't have to go through all this stuff.
我说，哎呀，这是有道理的，现在就修复它，这样你就不必经历所有这些事情了。
That's when it dawned on me that we can do it-- one bolt.
就在那时我突然意识到我们可以做到——一颗螺栓。
One bolt changed my attitude.
一颗螺栓改变了我的态度。
I think that there was a combination of feelings.
我认为这是多种感受的结合。
One feeling was, wow, this is different.
一种感觉是，哇，这不一样。
Again, that's industrial engineering professor Jeffrey Liker.
这又是工业工程教授 Jeffrey Liker。
Another feeling was of embarrassment.
另一种感觉是尴尬。
We've been in this industry for how many years-- my whole adult life-- we're Americans, we're supposed to be the best, most important country in the world, and we can't build a quality car.
我们在这个行业已经工作了多少年——我的整个成年生活——我们是美国人，我们应该是世界上最好、最重要的国家，但我们无法制造出高质量的汽车。
And these Japanese are doing it.
这些日本人正在这样做。
And there was a sense of hurt pride.
还有一种自尊心受到伤害的感觉。
Well, it was kind of, you become a little bit ashamed, because why couldn't we do that?
嗯，你会感到有点羞愧，因为我们为什么不能这样做呢？
Again, Earl Ferguson.
再说一遍，厄尔·弗格森。
Earl Ferguson You know, I think most of it was pride after that.
厄尔·弗格森 你知道，我认为在那之后大部分都是骄傲。
We wanted to be able to compete with what I saw in Japan.
我们希望能够与我在日本看到的情况竞争。
I said, I know we can do what they can do.
我说，我知道他们能做的我们也能做。
Only two weeks later when that first group left to go back to Fremont--
仅仅两周后，当第一批人离开返回弗里蒙特时——
Toyota trainer, John Shook.
丰田教练约翰·舒克。
John Shook We had a party, of course, a sushi party-- and this was years ago, before sushi was as it is now.
约翰·舒克：我们举办了一场派对，当然是寿司派对——那是几年前的事了，那时寿司还没有现在这样。
It was still a rare thing, of course.
当然，这仍然是一件罕见的事情。
And people were crying on both sides.
两边的人都在哭泣。
You had union workers-- grizzled old folks that had worked on the plant floor for 30 years, and they were hugging their Japanese counterparts, just absolutely in tears.
这里有工会工人——头发花白的老人，在工厂工作了 30 年，他们拥抱着日本同事，泪流满面。
There's actually footage of this, though we don't know if it's the first group of Americans.
实际上有这样的镜头，尽管我们不知道这是否是第一批美国人。
US workers are in kimonos with the Toyota name on them.
美国工人穿着印有丰田名字的和服。
And they hand their neckties to the Japanese and hug.
他们把领带递给日本人并拥抱。
One man is crying.
一名男子在哭泣。
[SPEAKING JAPANESE] One of the Americans says, in Japanese, "Thanks to you all, we now feel confident for our success." John Shook.
[说日语] 一位美国人用日语说：“谢谢大家，我们现在对我们的成功充满信心。”约翰·舒克.
And it might sound flowery to say 25 years later, but they had had such a powerful emotional experience of learning a new way of working, a way that people could actually work together collaboratively-- as a team.
25 年后说起来可能听起来很华丽，但他们在学习一种新的工作方式方面获得了如此强烈的情感体验，一种人们实际上可以作为一个团队一起协作的方式。
We knew it wasn't going to be easy-- there were a lot of hurdles to overcome-- but there was no question in anyone's mind that this was going to work.
我们知道这并不容易——有很多障碍需要克服——但毫无疑问，任何人都相信这会奏效。
But if it was going to work, it would mean a radically different relationship between workers and management.
但如果它能奏效，就意味着工人和管理层之间的关系将截然不同。
One where the managers trusted the workers to let them pull the andon cord and stop the line.
其中，经理们信任工人，让他们拉动安灯绳并停止生产线。
One where the workers trusted their bosses enough to ask for help when there were problems.
工人们足够信任他们的老板，在出现问题时会寻求帮助。
With teamwork, we can do it all.
通过团队合作，我们可以做到这一切。
[?
[？
Now let's hold up your hands, and together-- with teamwork, we can do it all.
现在，让我们举起双手，通过团队合作，我们可以做到这一切。
December, 1984, the first car rolled off the assembly line in Fremont, a yellow Chevy Nova.
1984年12月，第一辆黄色雪佛兰Nova汽车在弗里蒙特下线。
UAW rep Joel Smith was one of the speakers.
UAW 代表乔尔·史密斯是发言人之一。
Mr. Toyoda, staff, and fellow UAW members, today is a historic one-- the first car.
丰田先生、工作人员以及 UAW 的其他成员，今天是一个历史性的时刻——第一辆汽车。
But we're also on the threshold of a new adventure and relationship between labor and management.
但我们也正处于劳资关系新冒险的开端。
For too long, the American worker has been maligned, criticized, called bad names, for building lousy products.
长期以来，美国工人因生产劣质产品而受到诽谤、批评、骂名。
Poor quality American worker.
美国工人素质差。
At New United Motor, we will build a quality car, and we will only build a quality car.
在新联合汽车，我们将打造优质汽车，我们只会打造优质汽车。
And Mr. Toyoda, if you would please deliver this challenge to our friends in Japan, we intend to build the best quality car in the world.
丰田先生，如果您愿意向我们在日本的朋友们传达这一挑战，我们打算制造世界上最优质的汽车。
Thank you.
谢谢。
They hit the ground running.
他们立即行动起来。
It didn't take a year, two years, to get quality in that product.
没用一年、两年的时间就获得了该产品的质量。
Again, the UAW's Bruce Lee.
再次是美国汽车工人联合会的李小龙。
Bruce Lee Oh, I was so proud of them, you can't even believe.
李小龙哦，我为他们感到骄傲，你简直不敢相信。
The fact that they did it didn't surprise me that much, but how quickly they did it did.
他们这样做的事实并没有让我感到惊讶，但他们这样做的速度有多快让我感到惊讶。
It was amazing.
太棒了。
Here was these same people, who before-- I mean, hell, they'd go out of their way to make life miserable for General Motors particularly.
这些人以前——我的意思是，见鬼，他们会不遗余力地让通用汽车公司的生活变得更加悲惨。
And, you know, they were old, they were fat.
而且，你知道，他们又老又胖。
Because that was not a young workforce that we brought in there.
因为我们在那里引进的并不是年轻的劳动力。
The numbers coming out of the NUMMI plant were astonishing.
NUMMI 工厂的产量令人震惊。
Again, here's Jeffrey Liker.
杰弗里·莱克（Jeffrey Liker）再次报道。
The best measure they use is how many defects are there per 100 vehicles.
他们使用的最佳衡量标准是每 100 辆车中有多少缺陷。
And it was one of the best in America, and it was for the same for the Toyota cars that were made in California as the Corollas that were coming from Japan-- right from the beginning.
它是美国最好的汽车之一，对于在加州制造的丰田汽车和来自日本的卡罗拉来说也是如此——从一开始就是如此。
Maryann Keller, a long time car analyst, devotes a chapter to NUMMI in her book about the rise and fall of GM, Rude Awakening.
玛丽安·凯勒 (Maryann Keller) 是一名资深汽车分析师，她在她关于通用汽车公司兴衰的书《Rude Awakening》中用了一章专门讨论 NUMMI。
After just three months, she says, the cars coming off the line were getting near perfect quality ratings.
她说，仅仅三个月后，下线的汽车就达到了接近完美的质量评级。
And just as important for GM were the cost savings.
对于通用汽车来说同样重要的是节省成本。
One study suggested, remarkably, it would probably take 50% more workers under the old system to build the same car.
值得注意的是，一项研究表明，在旧制度下，制造同样的汽车可能需要多 50% 的工人。
Grievances and absenteeism plummeted, and lots of workers preferred the NUMMI teamwork system to the old combative one at GM.
不满情绪和缺勤率大幅下降，许多员工更喜欢 NUMMI 团队合作系统，而不是通用汽车旧有的好斗系统。
Several told us they enjoyed coming to work for the first time.
一些人告诉我们，他们很高兴第一次来上班。
I didn't want to tell people I worked at the Chevy truck plant, because a lot of people had a lot of problems with them.
我不想告诉人们我在雪佛兰卡车工厂工作，因为很多人对他们有很多问题。
That's Rick Madrid, who spent 17 years at the old Fremont plant building Chevy trucks.
这就是里克·马德里 (Rick Madrid)，他在旧弗里蒙特工厂生产雪佛兰卡车长达 17 年。
He was ashamed of that vehicle.
他对那辆车感到羞耻。
At NUMMI, making the Nova, he felt differently.
在 NUMMI 制造 Nova 时，他有不同的感受。
Oh I had a stack of these postcards, and I would just drive around, if I see a Nova parked, I would put one of these under the windshield wiper.
哦，我有一叠这样的明信片，我会开车到处走走，如果我看到停着一辆 Nova，我会把其中一张放在挡风玻璃雨刷器下面。
Of course, it had my name, my address on it, and your opinion of the Nova.
当然，上面有我的名字、我的地址，以及你对 Nova 的看法。
And just basically, they dropped me a line.
基本上，他们给我留言了。
And a lot of people did this.
很多人都这样做了。
And what did they say?
他们说什么？
Rick Madrid Some said they really liked it, a quality car, a good car.
里克·马德里 有人说他们真的很喜欢它，一辆优质的车，一辆好车。
Another worker told me he'd go to the Chevy dealership to stare at the Novas.
另一位工人告诉我，他会去雪佛兰经销店看看 Novas。
He didn't tell anyone he built them, or that he worked at NUMMI.
他没有告诉任何人他建造了它们，也没有告诉任何人他在 NUMMI 工作。
He just liked seeing what the cars looked like, sitting there on the lot.
他只是喜欢看看停在停车场上的汽车是什么样子。
That's NPR's Frank Langfitt.
那是 NPR 的弗兰克·朗菲特。
Coming up, so there's this great way of making cars, GM is using it in California.
接下来，有一种制造汽车的好方法，通用汽车正在加利福尼亚州使用它。
Not only are the cars more reliable, they're cheaper to make.
这些汽车不仅更可靠，而且制造成本也更低。
Seems like a no-brainer for GM-- start putting this way of producing cars into their other factories everywhere, and declare victory.
对于通用汽车来说，这似乎是理所当然的事情——开始将这种生产汽车的方式推广到他们各地的其他工厂，并宣布胜利。
Why they didn't do that, why what happened at NUMMI stayed at NUMMI for so long, that's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues.
为什么他们不这样做，为什么 NUMMI 发生的事情在 NUMMI 停留了这么久，我们的节目将继续，芝加哥公共广播电台和国际公共广播电台将报道这一点。
It's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass.
这就是美国生活，我是艾拉·格拉斯。
If you're just tuning in, we're in the middle of a story about a car plant in Fremont, California, called NUMMI.
如果您刚刚收听，我们正在讲述一个关于加利福尼亚州弗里蒙特一家名为 NUMMI 的汽车工厂的故事。
We now turn to the question, why was it so hard for GM to replicate NUMMI elsewhere in the company.
我们现在转向这个问题，为什么通用汽车在公司其他地方复制 NUMMI 如此困难。
In the first half of our story, we heard a lot from workers who are on the factory floor.
在故事的前半部分，我们听到了很多来自工厂车间工人的声音。
In this half of the story, the action moves to their bosses-- the supervisors at GM, who had a chance to turn the company around with what they learned at NUMMI.
在故事的后半部分，行动转移到了他们的老板——通用汽车的主管身上，他们有机会利用在 NUMMI 学到的知识来扭转公司的局面。
Again, here's NPR's Frank Langfitt.
再次请听 NPR 的 Frank Langfitt 的报道。
GM had gotten the first thing it wanted out of NUMMI-- a high quality small car.
通用汽车从 NUMMI 得到了它想要的第一件事——一款高品质的小型汽车。
Now the question was, how could it spread the lessons of NUMMI throughout the rest of the company?
现在的问题是，如何将 NUMMI 的经验教训传播到公司的其他部门？
To do that, it set up a special liaison office.
为此，它设立了一个特别联络处。
Managers were flown in for tours, to work the assembly line for a few days, to learn the team concept.
经理们乘飞机来参观，在装配线上工作几天，学习团队理念。
And from the beginning, GM executives sent 16 of their rising stars to help start NUMMI, with the idea that later they'd come home and change the company.
从一开始，通用汽车高管就派出了 16 名后起之秀来帮助创办 NUMMI，他们的想法是，他们稍后会回家并改变公司。
Two Wall Street Journal reporters later dubbed them the NUMMI commandos.
两名《华尔街日报》记者后来称他们为 NUMMI 突击队。
One of the 16 was Mark Hogan.
马克·霍根（Mark Hogan）就是这 16 人之一。
He says the top brass understood NUMMI's game changing potential-- that a Toyota style plant squeezed many more cars out of far fewer workers.
他说，高层管理人员了解 NUMMI 改变游戏规则的潜力——丰田式的工厂可以用更少的工人挤出更多的汽车。
If General Motors was able to take its many manufacturing facilities and implement that production system, each of those little changes adds up to billions to General Motors in the bottom line.
如果通用汽车能够利用其许多制造设施并实施该生产系统，那么每一个微小的变化都会为通用汽车带来数十亿美元的利润。
We were ready, we were fired, and we had the mental condition that says, we're going to do this, we're going to change the world.
我们准备好了，我们被解雇了，我们的精神状态告诉我们，我们要这么做，我们要改变世界。
That's Steve Bera, another commando.
那是史蒂夫·贝拉，另一位突击队员。
He says once NUMMI was up and running, he and the other 15 waited to be deployed elsewhere for the next phase of their mission.
他说，一旦 NUMMI 启动并运行，他和其他 15 人就等待部署到其他地方执行下一阶段的任务。
But the company didn't seem to know what to do with them.
但该公司似乎不知道如何处理它们。
Instead of coming back to the 16 of us and saying, there's some secret sauce here, what is it?
不要回到我们 16 个人并说，这里有一些秘密武器，它是什么？
How can we use this to our advantage?
我们如何利用这一点来发挥我们的优势？
No one ever asked us that question.
从来没有人问过我们这个问题。
Why didn't they do that?
他们为什么不这样做？
Steve Bera It was never part of a master plan.
史蒂夫·贝拉（Steve Bera） 这从来都不是总体规划的一部分。
And if there was a master plan, none of us ever saw it.
即使有一个总体规划，我们也从未见过。
Frustrated, Steve Bera quit after just two years at NUMMI.
史蒂夫·贝拉 (Steve Bera) 在 NUMMI 工作仅两年后就感到沮丧并辞职了。
With no master plan from Detroit, the first real attempt to do NUMMI again came from a factory manager 400 miles south of Fremont, at a plant in Van Nuys.
由于底特律没有制定总体规划，第一次真正尝试再次实施 NUMMI 的人来自弗里蒙特以南 400 英里范奈斯一家工厂的一位工厂经理。
The factory was facing a possible shut down.
该工厂可能面临关闭。
Its manager, a guy named Ernie Schaefer, had visited NUMMI, and he thought maybe he could save his plant if he adopted the Japanese system.
该公司的经理 Ernie Schaefer 曾访问过 NUMMI，他认为如果采用日本系统，也许可以拯救他的工厂。
But he didn't have all the advantages Fremont had-- this time, Toyota wasn't a partner in the experiment.
但他并不具备弗里蒙特所拥有的所有优势——这一次，丰田并不是实验的合作伙伴。
GM had to transform Van Nuys on its own.
通用汽车必须自行改造范奈斯。
Ernie Schaefer knew it was going to be tough.
厄尼·谢弗知道这会很艰难。
The thing that I think kept us moving forward is we had no alternative.
我认为让我们继续前进的原因是我们别无选择。
I mean, it was pretty well known that if we didn't successfully implement this philosophy in Van Nuys, we weren't going to be around.
我的意思是，众所周知，如果我们没有在范奈斯成功地实施这一理念，我们就不会存在。
Van Nuys made Firebirds and Camaros, and its reputation wasn't much better than GM Fremont's had been.
范奈斯生产了火鸟和科迈罗，但它的声誉并不比通用汽车弗里蒙特好多少。
Defective cars coming off the line, battles with the union, sabotage.
有缺陷的汽车下线、与工会的斗争、破坏活动。
So Ernie Schaefer enlisted the same UAW leader who got the union on board at NUMMI, Bruce Lee, to help him win over the Van Nuys workforce.
因此，厄尼·谢弗 (Ernie Schaefer) 招募了曾在 NUMMI 加入工会的 UAW 领导人李小龙 (Bruce Lee)，帮助他赢得范奈斯 (Van Nuys) 员工的支持。
They shut down the plant for two weeks to train everyone in team concept and quality control.
他们将工厂关闭了两周，对每个人进行团队理念和质量控制方面的培训。
For this workforce, there were no trips to Japan, no tearful sushi parties, and from the start, workers were skeptical.
对于这些员工来说，没有去日本旅行，没有泪流满面的寿司派对，从一开始，工人们就持怀疑态度。
The lack of receptiveness to change was so deep--
对改变的接受能力是如此之深——
Larry Spiegel was another NUMMI commando.
拉里·斯皮格尔 (Larry Spiegel) 是另一名 NUMMI 突击队员。
He moved down to Van Nuys to help launch the Japanese system there.
他搬到了范奈斯，帮助在那里启动日本系统。
There were too many people convinced that they didn't need to have to change.
有太多人相信他们不需要改变。
Hadn't General Motors threatened to close the plant?
通用汽车不是威胁要关闭工厂吗？
They didn't believe it.
他们不相信。
Frank Langfitt Why?
弗兰克·朗菲特 为什么？
This was one of the biggest differences between Fremont and Van Nuys.
这是弗里蒙特和范奈斯之间最大的区别之一。
Van Nuys hadn't been shut down.
范奈斯并没有被关闭。
Turns out, it's a lot easier to get workers to change if they've lost their jobs and then you offer them back.
事实证明，如果员工失业了，然后你再把他们重新聘用，那么让他们做出改变会容易得多。
Without that, many union members just saw the Toyota system as a threat.
如果没有这一点，许多工会成员只会将丰田系统视为威胁。
And they had a point.
他们说得有道理。
Under the Japanese system, Van Nuys stood to lose a fourth of its workforce, because the more efficient a plant becomes, the fewer workers it needs.
在日本的体制下，范奈斯将失去四分之一的劳动力，因为工厂效率越高，需要的工人就越少。
And just as bad, the team concept hurt their seniority rights.
同样糟糕的是，团队理念损害了他们的资历权利。
This had been a problem for union members back at NUMMI also.
对于 NUMMI 的工会成员来说，这也是一个问题。
Seniority is what you work for.
资历就是你工作的目的。
To me, that's what a union's about, seniority.
对我来说，这就是工会的意义：资历。
Richard Aguilar worked at NUMMI, and to him, seniority was just another way of saying fairness.
Richard Aguilar 在 NUMMI 工作，对他来说，资历只是公平的另一种表达方式。
He waited 15 years to get enough seniority for the job he'd always wanted in the plant.
他等了 15 年才获得足够的资历，胜任他一直想在工厂工作的职位。
Under the new system, management could just hire someone off the street for that job.
在新系统下，管理层可以雇佣外地人员来完成这项工作。
The whole idea of seniority placing you into one great job for years was impossible under the team concept.
在团队理念下，凭资历让你在一份伟大的工作中工作多年的想法是不可能的。
Workers had to learn every job on their team and take turns doing those jobs.
工人们必须学习团队中的每一项工作，并轮流做这些工作。
And the team concept, it sounds good-- I mean, team player sounds good.
团队概念听起来不错——我的意思是，团队合作者听起来不错。
But it pit worker against worker, it really does.
但这确实是工人与工人之间的矛盾。
This was the other thing Richard hated about the Japanese system.
这是理查德讨厌日本制度的另一件事。
The whole point of a union, its most basic principle, was to protect you from management.
工会的全部意义，其最基本的原则，就是保护你免受管理。
But once people were working in teams, Richard says, union members started doing things for management that just seemed wrong.
但理查德说，一旦人们在团队中工作，工会成员就开始为管理层做一些看似错误的事情。
People now snitched on each other.
人们现在互相告密。
You know, they'd point fingers, oh, he's not doing his job right, you know, or she's not doing the job right.
你知道，他们会指责，哦，他没有做好他的工作，你知道，或者她没有做好工作。
And they would even keep track of the stuff they'd missed.
他们甚至会记录他们错过的事情。
Because that's what the company puts in them, that the only way you can protect your job, you have to keep the team strong, so if there's a weak link, you've got to get rid of that weak link.
因为这就是公司对他们的要求，只有这样你才能保住自己的工作，你必须保持团队的强大，所以如果有薄弱环节，你就必须消除那个薄弱环节。
And I would go tell them, you can't do that.
我会去告诉他们，你不能这样做。
You can't build a case for management against another union member.
你不能针对其他工会成员提出管理层的诉讼。
It made me angry and disappointed that the union had gone so backwards that they forgot what a union meant-- taking care of each other.
让我感到愤怒和失望的是，工会如此倒退，以至于他们忘记了工会的含义——互相照顾。
At Van Nuys, it wasn't just union members who resisted the Japanese system.
在范奈斯，抵制日本制度的不仅仅是工会成员。
Managers didn't like it either.
经理们也不喜欢这样。
They had their own privileges to protect.
他们有自己的特权需要保护。
Some opposed the idea of stopping the assembly line because their bonuses depended on the number of cars that rolled off that line-- never mind how many defects they had.
一些人反对停止装配线的想法，因为他们的奖金取决于下线的汽车数量，而不管它们有多少缺陷。
And under the team concept, executives and workers all share the same cafeteria and parking lot.
在团队理念下，高管和工人共享同一食堂和停车场。
Managers at NUMMI didn't have a problem with that, but the managers at Van Nuys?
NUMMI 的经理对此没有意见，但 Van Nuys 的经理呢？
They rioted.
他们骚乱了。
Frank Langfitt The UAW's Bruce Lee remembers getting a phone call from plant supervisor Ernie Schaefer about his managers.
Frank Langfitt UAW 的 Bruce Lee 记得接到工厂主管 Ernie Schaefer 的电话，询问他的经理。
They'd basically told Ernie, you do that and we're out of here.
他们基本上告诉厄尼，你这么做了，我们就离开这里。
We're going to quit en masse.
我们要集体退出。
Because Ernie called me, he said, "Bruce, I can't do it.
因为厄尼打电话给我，他说：“布鲁斯，我做不到。
I can't do it.
我做不到。
I can't do those things." I said, "Just think about it, that's a nothing.
我不能做那些事情。”我说：“想想看，这没什么。
So they have to walk 20 yards more." I said, "Isn't that foolish that some grown man would come up and tell you, I'm going to quit if I can't have this parking place right here."
所以他们必须多走20码。”我说：“有些成年人会过来告诉你，如果我不能在这里拥有这个停车位，我就会辞职，这不是很愚蠢吗？”
So people fought the new system from both sides.
因此，人们从两方面与新制度作斗争。
Managers gave Ernie grief, and a dissident faction sprang up in the local union, which elected a staunch opponent of the Japanese system as their chairman.
经理们给厄尼带来了悲伤，当地工会中出现了一个持不同政见的派系，该派系选举了一位坚决反对日本制度的人作为他们的主席。
And as if that all wasn't enough, Ernie Schaefer ran into another obstacle.
似乎这一切还不够，厄尼·谢弗遇到了另一个障碍。
Workers could only build cars as good as the parts they were given.
工人们只能制造出与他们所获得的零件一样好的汽车。
At NUMMI, many of the parts came from Japan, and were really good.
在 NUMMI，许多零件都来自日本，而且非常好。
At Van Nuys, it was totally different.
在范奈斯，情况完全不同。
That was perhaps one of our biggest failures, in that an isolated plant can't do this by itself.
这也许是我们最大的失败之一，因为孤立的植物无法独自做到这一点。
The team concept stressed continuous improvement.
团队理念强调持续改进。
If the team got a shipment of parts that didn't fit, they were supposed to alert their bosses, who would then go to suppliers and engineers to fix the problem.
如果团队收到一批不合适的零件，他们应该提醒老板，然后老板会去找供应商和工程师解决问题。
All the departments in the company worked together.
公司各部门通力合作。
But Ernie's suppliers had never operated in a system like that.
但厄尼的供应商从未在这样的系统中运作过。
If he asked for fixes, they blew him off.
如果他要求修复，他们就会拒绝他。
And if he called Detroit and asked them to redesign a part that wasn't working, they'd ask him why he was so special-- they didn't have to change it for any other plant, why should they change it for him?
如果他打电话给底特律并要求他们重新设计一个不起作用的部件，他们会问他为什么他如此特别——他们不需要为任何其他工厂改变它，为什么要为他改变它？
You had asked the question earlier, what's different when you walk into the NUMMI plant?
您之前问过这个问题，当您走进 NUMMI 工厂时，有什么不同？
Well, you can see a lot of things different.
嗯，你可以看到很多不同的东西。
But the one thing you don't see is the system that supports the NUMMI plant.
但您看不到的一件事是支持 NUMMI 工厂的系统。
I don't think, at that time, anybody understood the large nature of this system.
我认为当时没有人理解这个系统的本质。
General Motors was a kind of throw it over the wall organization.
通用汽车公司是一种“翻墙”组织。
Each department, we were very compartmentalized, and you design that vehicle, and you'd throw it over the wall to the manufacturing guys.
我们的每个部门都非常划分，你设计那辆车，然后把它扔给制造人员。
And if something didn't work, or was impossible to assemble, that was their problem.
如果有什么东西不起作用，或者无法组装，那就是他们的问题。
And they had to deal with it.
他们必须处理这个问题。
And you're in there, you've kind of put your heart and soul into making this whole team concept work, and now you're the messenger that has to go out and say, "Look guys, even though this is the way the system's supposed to work, and these are my issues, I'm not going to be able to solve them, and you're going to have deal with it." And it was destructive, it was detrimental, I mean, no question about it.
你在那里，全心全意地让整个团队的概念发挥作用，现在你是一个信使，必须出去说：“听着，伙计们，即使这是系统应该工作的方式，这些是我的问题，我无法解决它们，而你必须处理它。”我的意思是，毫无疑问，它是破坏性的、有害的。
Schaefer says, when he realized how much of the Japanese system happened off the factory floor, it answered something that had never quite made sense to him-- why had Toyota been so open with GM in showing its operations?
谢弗说，当他意识到日本的系统中有多少是在工厂车间外发生的时，它回答了一些他从未完全理解的问题——为什么丰田如此公开地向通用汽车展示其运营情况？
You know, they never prohibited us from walking through the plant, understanding, even asking questions of some of their key people.
你知道，他们从来没有禁止我们走进工厂、了解情况，甚至向他们的一些关键人员提问。
I've often puzzled over that-- why they did that.
我经常对此感到困惑——他们为什么这么做。
And I think they recognized, we were asking all the wrong questions.
我认为他们认识到，我们问了所有错误的问题。
We didn't understand this bigger picture thing.
我们不明白这个更大的图景。
All of our questions were focused on the floor, the assembly plant, what's happening on the line.
我们所有的问题都集中在车间、装配厂、生产线上发生的事情。
That's not the real issue.
这不是真正的问题。
The issue is, how do you support that system with all the other functions that have to take place in the organization?
问题是，您如何通过组织中必须执行的所有其他功能来支持该系统？
Quality at Van Nuys didn't improve, and in 1992, GM shut the plant down for good, leaving 2,600 people without jobs.
范奈斯的质量没有提高，通用汽车于 1992 年永久关闭了该工厂，导致 2,600 人失业。
This is what the NUMMI commandos were up against-- entrenched, defensive bureaucracies and workers many of the places they turned.
这就是 NUMMI 突击队所面对的对手——他们所转向的许多地方的根深蒂固的防御性官僚机构和工人。
They were not only trying to change the biggest corporation in the world, they were trying to change a corporation that had been essentially a collection of individual car companies-- Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Buick-- each with its own design team, own leadership, and its own way of doing things.
他们不仅试图改变世界上最大的公司，而且还试图改变一家本质上是各个汽车公司——凯迪拉克、奥兹莫比尔、庞蒂亚克、别克——的集合体的公司，每个公司都有自己的设计团队、自己的领导力和自己的做事方式。
It's a whole new process, a whole different process than the one they'd grown up with.
这是一个全新的过程，一个与他们成长过程中完全不同的过程。
And it was a huge--
那是一个巨大的——
Dick Fuller was another commando.
迪克·富勒是另一名突击队员。
He ran the information technology division at NUMMI, which used some of the same streamlining concepts employed on the factory floor.
他负责管理 NUMMI 的信息技术部门，该部门使用了一些与工厂车间相同的精简概念。
He says when GM managers visited NUMMI, instead of trying to figure out how they could benefit from the system, some of them attacked it.
他说，当通用汽车经理访问 NUMMI 时，他们中的一些人并没有试图弄清楚如何从该系统中受益，而是对其进行了攻击。
Fuller remembers one IT manager who visited from a plant on the East Coast.
Fuller 记得一位 IT 经理曾从东海岸的一家工厂参观过。
And when he came back, he wrote a report, which if I put a title on it, would say, won't work here.
当他回来时，他写了一份报告，如果我给它加上一个标题，我会说，在这里不起作用。
And I think part of that was a threat to him.
我认为这部分是对他的威胁。
It was a threat to him to see that that was working so well.
看到这种方法运作得这么好，对他来说是一种威胁。
Do you think this guy looked at this and said, well, if this works here and they try to spread it, I'll lose my job?
你认为这个人看到这个后会说，好吧，如果这在这里有效并且他们试图传播它，我会失去工作吗？
Well, I don't think he was going to lose his job, but he could lose some of his-- you know, he'd probably have to give up half his staff.
嗯，我不认为他会失去工作，但他可能会失去一些——你知道，他可能不得不放弃一半的员工。
You know, that's power.
你知道，这就是力量。
People is power in General Motors.
在通用汽车公司，人就是力量。
Getting all these mini empires to embrace the kinds of radical changes that happened at NUMMI would have taken an almost Stalinesque leadership from above-- a combination of charisma and fury in the corner office.
要让所有这些迷你帝国接受 NUMMI 所发生的彻底变革，需要几乎斯大林式的自上而下的领导——角落办公室的魅力和愤怒的结合。
And NUMMI commando Mark Hogan says no one at GM fit that bill.
NUMMI 突击队员马克·霍根 (Mark Hogan) 表示，通用汽车公司没有人符合这一要求。
I was very convinced that we had to change, and we had to change rapidly, and I think all of us that were NUMMI alums, so to speak, were frustrated at the lack of urgency.
我非常确信我们必须改变，而且我们必须迅速改变，我认为我们所有 NUMMI 校友，可以说，都因缺乏紧迫感而感到沮丧。
Did you have those kinds of conversations with people in the '80s back in Detroit?
您是否与 80 年代底特律的人们进行过此类对话？
I did.
我做到了。
Frank Langfitt What would people say to you?
弗兰克·朗菲特 人们会对你说什么？
Yeah, I think there still wasn't a recognition that the-- the formidability of the competition, particularly from Toyota.
是的，我认为人们仍然没有认识到竞争的激烈程度，尤其是来自丰田的竞争。
I think a lot of people were in denial, or just not willing to recognize it.
我认为很多人都否认这一点，或者只是不愿意承认这一点。
And even though GM had gone from 50% market share in the early '70s, to mid 30s, it was gradual over time and there wasn't this sense of reaction or urgency that other companies that lost that much market share might have felt.
尽管通用汽车的市场份额从 20 世纪 70 年代初的 50% 上升到了 30 年代中期，但随着时间的推移，它是渐进的，并且没有其他失去如此多市场份额的公司可能感受到的反应或紧迫感。
Those exact numbers-- GM went from 47% of the US market in the mid 1970s to 35% a decade later.
这些确切的数字——通用汽车在美国市场的份额从 20 世纪 70 年代中期的 47% 上升到十年后的 35%。
One reason car execs were in denial was Detroit's insular culture.
汽车业高管否认的原因之一是底特律的孤立文化。
Yes, unions and management were always at each other's throats, and yes, GM and its suppliers had a destructive relationship that seemed to almost discourage quality, but everyone had settled into comfortable roles in this dysfunctional system and learned to live with it.
是的，工会和管理层总是互相争斗，是的，通用汽车及其供应商之间存在着一种破坏性的关系，这似乎几乎阻碍了质量，但每个人都在这个功能失调的系统中找到了舒适的角色，并学会了忍受它。
And in the late 1980s, with their market share in free fall, Jeffrey Liker says they were more apt to blame others than themselves.
杰弗里·莱克 (Jeffrey Liker) 表示，在 20 世纪 80 年代末，随着他们的市场份额直线下降，他们更容易责怪别人而不是自己。
I worked with all the big three at the time, automakers, and it was common in all three automakers.
我与当时的三大汽车制造商都合作过，这在所有三个汽车制造商中都很常见。
They all believed that if the consumers think we have quality problems, it's because Consumer Reports is misleading them, and they're biased toward Toyota.
他们都认为，如果消费者认为我们有质量问题，那是因为《消费者报告》误导了他们，他们对丰田有偏见。
They all believed that Consumer Reports was against them, that there was somewhat of a myth of Japanese quality.
他们都认为《消费者报告》对他们不利，认为日本品质存在某种神话。
If all of that wasn't enough to stymie attempts to learn from NUMMI, GM was distracted by other projects-- massive projects.
如果所有这些还不足以阻碍向 NUMMI 学习的尝试，那么通用汽车就被其他项目——大型项目——分散了注意力。
It bought Ross Perot's company, Electronic Data Systems.
它收购了罗斯·佩罗的公司电子数据系统公司。
It bought Hughes Aircraft for $5 billion.
它以 50 亿美元收购了休斯飞机公司。
It decided the future was robotics.
它决定未来是机器人技术。
It decided the future was a massive, costly reorganization.
它决定未来将是一次大规模、成本高昂的重组。
It started Saturn, which produced cars that were better marketed than they were built.
它创办了土星公司，该公司生产的汽车营销效果比制造出来的要好。
Then came the 1991 recession-- car sales slumped.
然后是 1991 年经济衰退——汽车销量大幅下滑。
Again, Mark Hogan.
又是马克·霍根。
It was really its first significant wake up call.
这确实是它第一次重要的警钟。
GM unfortunately had a massive loss, 1992-- General Motors lost more than $20 billion.
不幸的是，通用汽车公司遭受了巨大损失，1992 年通用汽车公司损失超过 200 亿美元。
So I think at that point in time, there was a complete rethinking of the way we ran the company-- that thing's had to change, and they had to change fast.
所以我认为在那个时候，我们对公司的运营方式进行了彻底的重新思考——事情必须改变，而且他们必须快速改变。
It was the largest loss in American corporate history to that time-- $23.5 billion.
这是当时美国企业历史上最大的亏损——235 亿美元。
GM's board of directors responded with what the press called a boardroom blood bath, purging a long list of managers.
通用汽车董事会的回应被媒体称为“董事会血洗”，清除了一长串经理。
Jack Smith took over as CEO.
杰克·史密斯接任首席执行官。
He was the executive who'd led the negotiations with Toyota to create NUMMI.
他是领导与丰田谈判创建 NUMMI 的高管。
He saw NUMMI as a way forward for GM.
他认为 NUMMI 是通用汽车前进的道路。
Mark Hogan and some of the other commandos felt they finally had a champion.
马克·霍根和其他一些突击队员觉得他们终于有了一个冠军。
Jack Smith was installed, and started to rapidly implement the Toyota production system into General Motors.
杰克·史密斯上任后，开始将丰田生产体系迅速引入通用汽车公司。
Rapidly by GM's standards, which wasn't nearly rapidly enough.
按照通用汽车的标准，速度很快，但还不够快。
Jack Smith declined to talk to me for this story, but he told a reporter a few years ago, "I just wish it had happened a lot faster than it did." Pick your nautical cliche-- reforming General Motors was like turning around a battleship, one manager said.
杰克·史密斯拒绝就这个故事与我交谈，但他几年前告诉记者，“我只是希望事情发生得比实际发生得快得多。”选择你的航海陈词滥调吧——一位经理说，改革通用汽车就像调转一艘战舰。
Another compared it to steering the Titanic with a canoe paddle.
另一个人将其比作用独木舟桨驾驶泰坦尼克号。
Jeffrey Liker says the cultural gap between NUMMI and the rest of GM was so vast that even with clear marching orders to change, some of the people running the company didn't know where to begin.
杰弗里·莱克 (Jeffrey Liker) 表示，NUMMI 与通用汽车其他部门之间的文化差距如此之大，以至于即使有明确的变革命令，公司的一些管理人员也不知道从哪里开始。
There was no vocabulary, even, to explain it.
甚至没有词汇来解释它。
So I remember, one of the GM managers was ordered, from a very senior level-- came from vice president-- to make a GM plant look like NUMMI.
所以我记得，一位来自副总裁的高层经理被命令让通用汽车的工厂看起来像 NUMMI。
And he said, "I want you to go there with cameras and take a picture of every square inch.
他说：“我希望你带着相机去那里，拍下每一寸土地。
And whatever you take a picture of, I want it to look like that in our plant.
无论你拍什么照片，我都希望它看起来像我们工厂里的那样。
There should be no excuse for why we're different than NUMMI, why our quality is lower, why our productivity isn't as high, because you're going to copy everything you see."
不应该有任何理由解释为什么我们与 NUMMI 不同、为什么我们的质量较低、为什么我们的生产力不那么高，因为你会复制你看到的一切。”
Immediately, this guy knew that was crazy.
立刻，这家伙就知道这太疯狂了。
We can't copy employee motivation, we can't copy good relationships between the union and management.
我们无法复制员工的积极性，我们也无法复制工会与管理层之间的良好关系。
That's not something you can copy, and you can't even take a photograph of it.
那不是你可以复制的东西，你甚至不能给它拍照。
The first round of changes put andon cords and Japanese style inventory control into the GM plants.
第一轮变革将安灯线和日式库存控制引入通用汽车工厂。
But there was no change in the culture.
但文化并没有改变。
Workers and managers continued their old antagonistic ways.
工人和管理者继续他们古老的对立方式。
In some of the factories where they installed the andon cord, workers got yelled at when they pulled it.
在一些安装安灯绳的工厂里，工人们拉扯安灯绳时会遭到呵斥。
A few plants even cut the cords down.
一些植物甚至剪断了电线。
So the second round of changes included some team concepts.
所以第二轮的改变包括了一些团队概念。
They put together a book explaining how each plant should run, and the reasoning behind it.
他们整理了一本书，解释每个工厂应该如何运行及其背后的原因。
Geoff Weller was one of the people dispatched in the 1990s to convert the company plant by plant.
杰夫·韦勒 (Geoff Weller) 是 20 世纪 90 年代被派去逐个改造公司工厂的人员之一。
Weller says some factory managers were receptive, but in the sprawling, decentralized system, the plant manager was still king and ran the factory the way he wanted.
韦勒说，一些工厂经理很乐意接受，但在庞大的分散系统中，工厂经理仍然是国王，并按照他想要的方式管理工厂。
We had some tough goes in some of our facilities, where we spent more time trying to convince the plant leadership, versus actually going on and doing the implementation.
我们在一些工厂遇到了一些困难，我们花了更多的时间试图说服工厂领导层，而不是实际进行实施。
I would say-- I was asked in one plant to leave, because they were not interested in what I had to sell.
我想说——一家工厂要求我离开，因为他们对我要卖的东西不感兴趣。
How did he actually ask you to leave?
他实际上是如何要求你离开的？
What'd he say?
他说什么？
And what did you do?
你做了什么？
Geoff Weller I left.
杰夫·韦勒我离开了。
Because, you know, I was in his home, so to speak-- his territory, his plant.
因为，你知道，我在他的家里，可以这么说——他的领地，他的工厂。
Now, whatever happened to that plant manager who asked you to leave?
现在，那个让你离开的厂长怎么样了？
This may sound like a naive question, but why didn't the CEO pick up the phone and say, you're fired?
这听起来可能是一个天真的问题，但为什么首席执行官不拿起电话说，你被解雇了？
Well, it's a big company, and I'm not sure that-- it doesn't work that way.
嗯，这是一家大公司，我不确定——它不是这样运作的。
Lots of people in GM still didn't see the need to change.
通用汽车公司的许多人仍然认为没有必要做出改变。
By the late 1990s, the company was posting huge profits selling trucks and SUVs, which made the loss in market share seem less urgent.
到 20 世纪 90 年代末，该公司在卡车和 SUV 销售方面获得了巨额利润，这使得市场份额的损失似乎不再那么紧迫。
To make real progress, managers had to leave the United States.
为了取得真正的进步，管理人员必须离开美国。
One overhauled GM Germany.
一辆大修德国通用汽车。
Mark Hogan took over GM Brazil in 1994 to enact NUMMI principles there.
马克·霍根 (Mark Hogan) 于 1994 年接管通用汽车巴西公司，并在那里制定了 NUMMI 原则。
In Brazil, he had a big unionized workforce, but he could avoid GM's bureaucracy, its supplier network, and the United Auto Workers.
在巴西，他拥有庞大的工会劳动力，但他可以避开通用汽车的官僚机构、供应商网络和汽车工人联合会。
How long did it take you to implement the lessons of NUMMI in Brazil?
您在巴西实施 NUMMI 的经验教训花了多长时间？
It took us about 18 to 24 months, which at the time I was quite impatient about.
我们花了大约18到24个月的时间，当时我对此很不耐烦。
I mean, I wanted it faster.
我的意思是，我想要更快。
And what did that mean for the bottom line for GM?
这对通用汽车的利润意味着什么？
Well, in that time frame, particularly '94 though '97, GM Brazil was one of the most profitable entities within GM.
嗯，在那个时期，特别是 94 年到 97 年，通用汽车巴西公司是通用汽车公司内最赚钱的实体之一。
But in America, everyone I talked to said it took about a decade and a half after NUMMI for change to even begin to take hold at GM.
但在美国，与我交谈过的每个人都表示，在 NUMMI 实施之后大约十五年之后，通用汽车才开始发生变革。
By the year 2000, GM finally started to see a generational transformation.
到 2000 年，通用汽车终于开始进行代际转型。
Jeffrey Liker says, so many managers had come through NUMMI for training, for a day, or a week, or a year.
Jeffrey Liker 表示，很多经理都通过 NUMMI 接受培训，培训时间为一天、一周或一年。
Over time, you start to get 10 people, 20 people, 100 people, 300 people, and you now have a critical mass of people in GM who've all been in NUMMI, they've lived it.
随着时间的推移，你开始拥有 10 人、20 人、100 人、300 人，现在 GM 中已经有足够多的人了，他们都曾在 NUMMI 工作过，他们都经历过这种情况。
Now they're managing people and teaching them what they learned, and it snowballs, and suddenly the world is different in GM, and nobody can even tell you exactly why.
现在他们正在管理员工并教给他们所学到的东西，事情就像滚雪球一样越滚越大，突然之间，通用汽车的世界就变得不同了，甚至没有人能确切地告诉你为什么。
By the early 2000s, GM had developed a production model with the UAW based on Japanese principles that would go into all of its plants.
到 2000 年代初，通用汽车与 UAW 共同开发了一种基于日本原则的生产模式，该模式将应用于其所有工厂。
It was called the global manufacturing system.
它被称为全球制造体系。
And although GM quality still lags behind the imports, it's improved a lot.
虽然转基因的质量仍然落后于进口，但已经提高了很多。
Again, Jeffrey Liker.
又是杰弗里·莱克。
If you look carefully at the quality of a GM product, and you look with a fine tooth comb, with a magnifying glass, you're going to see a level of quality that you didn't see 15 years ago.
如果你用细齿梳子和放大镜仔细观察转基因产品的质量，你会看到 15 年前看不到的质量水平。
You want to show me for a sec, do you mind?
你想给我看一下，介意吗？
There's one right here.
这里就有一个。
I did my interview with Jeffrey Liker at this year's Detroit Auto Show.
我在今年的底特律车展上采访了杰弗里·莱克。
And we walked over to the GM exhibit, to the Cadillac SRX, which is a small SUV.
我们走到通用汽车的展厅，看到凯迪拉克 SRX，这是一款小型 SUV。
Jeffrey pointed to the gap between the door and the car frame, which is supposed to be uniform.
杰弗里指着车门和车架之间的间隙，应该是均匀的。
And if we look down here, it looks really good.
如果我们往下看，它看起来真的很棒。
The gap is about the same between the front and the back door, the surface is very smooth and very uniform.
前后门之间的缝隙大致相同，表面非常光滑且非常均匀。
And 15 years ago, what would that have looked like?
15 年前，那会是什么样子？
You would see, maybe at the top, it would be more narrow than at the bottom.
你会发现，也许在顶部，它会比底部更窄。
If you look inside the car and you open the glove box, it falls very gradually down, the way it's supposed to.
如果你看一下车内并打开手套箱，它就会像它应该的那样逐渐下降。
You close it-- I barely have to touch it and it closes tightly.
你把它关上——我几乎不用碰它，它就紧紧地关上了。
Precision in all these details makes for a better looking, more reliable car, where things work like they're supposed to.
所有这些细节的精确性使得汽车看起来更美观、更可靠，并且一切都按照预期进行。
But this improvement didn't come soon enough.
但这种改进来得不够快。
Some cars and some plants improved less quickly than others.
一些汽车和一些工厂的改进速度慢于其他工厂。
And while GM was getting better, so were its competitors, leaving it still near the back of the pack.
尽管通用汽车正在变得更好，但它的竞争对手也在进步，使其仍然处于落后地位。
Well, one of the ironies of GM was that at the moment it went bankrupt, it was probably a better company than it had ever been.
嗯，通用汽车的讽刺之一是，在它破产的那一刻，它可能是一家比以往任何时候都更好的公司。
That's James Womack, co-author of a seminal book comparing the Toyota and GM production systems, The Machine that Changed the World.
这就是詹姆斯·沃马克（James Womack），他是一本比较丰田和通用汽车生产系统的开创性著作《改变世界的机器》的合著者。
In the factories, they had really dramatically closed the productivity gap that they had had for many, many years.
在工厂里，他们确实极大地缩小了多年来存在的生产力差距。
And on the new products, they have much better quality.
而在新产品上，它们的质量要好得多。
So that the company that failed was actually doing better than it had ever done.
因此，失败的公司实际上比以往任何时候都做得更好。
But it was too late, and that's really sort of hard to forgive-- that if you take 30 years to figure it out, chances are you're going to get run over.
但为时已晚，这真的很难原谅——如果你花了 30 年才弄清楚，你很可能会被碾压。
And they got run over.
他们被碾了。
In the end, what did them in was the 2008 recession.
最终，他们陷入了2008年的经济衰退。
It destroyed the car market, and next year, General Motors became the largest industrial bankruptcy in US history.
它摧毁了汽车市场，明年，通用汽车公司成为美国历史上最大的工业破产案。
Its bailout cost taxpayers more than $50 billion.
其救助花费了纳税人超过 500 亿美元。
I asked Mark Hogan, the NUMMI commando who went on to run GM's small car division in North America, if GM had adopted NUMMI earlier, could it have really changed all that?
我问 Mark Hogan，这位 NUMMI 突击队员，后来负责通用汽车在北美的小型汽车部门，如果通用汽车更早采用 NUMMI，它真的能改变这一切吗？
Definitely.
确实。
I think if General Motors had moved in the late '80s to implement this system across the board, it may very well have saved GM from going into bankruptcy.
我认为，如果通用汽车公司在 80 年代末全面实施这一系统，很可能会让通用汽车免于破产。
Explain that.
解释一下。
Mark Hogan Well, I just think the productivity and the quality changes that come with that would have been so profound that this ever increasing loss of market share would have been stopped.
马克·霍根（Mark Hogan）：嗯，我只是认为随之而来的生产力和质量变化将是如此深刻，以至于市场份额不断扩大的损失将会被阻止。
Well, I think they'd have been building a higher quality product.
嗯，我认为他们会开发出更高质量的产品。
Again, the UAW's Bruce Lee.
再次是美国汽车工人联合会的李小龙。
Bruce Lee You know, they sold junk for a while.
李小龙 你知道，他们有一段时间卖垃圾。
Just any kind of piece of crap they could roll out there, they did.
他们可以在那里推出任何类型的垃圾，他们都这么做了。
And they paid a tremendous price for it, and even when they turned the corner in quality, people didn't trust them.
他们为此付出了巨大的代价，即使他们在质量上扭转了局面，人们也不信任他们。
They'd say, well, gee, they're building a good car now, why aren't they buying them?
他们会说，哎呀，他们现在正在制造一辆好车，为什么不买呢？
Because they don't trust them.
因为他们不信任他们。
But had they adopted and embraced the team concept in an honest way-- we're going to do this-- I think it might have dramatically changed what happened in the American auto industry.
但是，如果他们以诚实的方式采用并接受团队概念——我们将这样做——我认为这可能会极大地改变美国汽车行业发生的事情。
There's no question in my mind.
我心里没有任何疑问。
Of course, quality and reliability weren't the only problems that brought GM down.
当然，质量和可靠性并不是导致通用汽车倒闭的唯一问题。
Executives made other big mistakes.
高管们还犯了其他重大错误。
Over the years, General Motors negotiated contracts with the UAW with such generous health care coverage that by 2007, it amounted to more than $1,600 for each vehicle GM produced in North America.
多年来，通用汽车与 UAW 谈判签订的合同中包含非常慷慨的医疗保险，到 2007 年，通用汽车在北美生产的每辆汽车的医疗保险费用已超过 1,600 美元。
And initially, some GM executives dismissed hybrid cars, like the Prius, as a publicity stunt.
最初，通用汽车的一些高管将普锐斯等混合动力汽车视为一种宣传噱头。
Instead, they bet the company on SUVs and trucks, only to see sales crash when gas hit four bucks a gallon.
相反，他们把公司的赌注押在SUV和卡车上，但当汽油价格跌至每加仑4美元时，销量却大幅下滑。
One odd twist to this story-- over the last decade, as GM became more like Toyota, Toyota became a little bit like GM.
这个故事有一个奇怪的转折——在过去的十年里，随着通用汽车变得越来越像丰田，丰田也变得有点像通用汽车。
In 2008, they took over the title from GM of the world's largest car maker.
2008年，他们从通用汽车手中接过了全球最大汽车制造商的头衔。
But Toyota executives now say the company did this by making one of GM's old mistakes-- stressing quantity over quality.
但丰田高管现在表示，该公司之所以能做到这一点，是因为犯了通用汽车的一个老错误——强调数量而不是质量。
Akio Toyoda is the company's CEO.
丰田章男是该公司的首席执行官。
He's the grandson of the founder, and he cut his teeth at NUMMI.
他是创始人的孙子，也是在 NUMMI 起步的。
In a congressional hearing last month about Toyota's sudden acceleration problem, he said the company's crucial mistake was growing too fast.
在上个月关于丰田突然加速问题的国会听证会上，他表示该公司的关键错误是增长太快。
We pursued growth over the speed at which we are able to develop our people and our organization.
我们追求的增长速度超过了我们员工和组织的发展速度。
And I am deeply sorry for any accident that Toyota drivers have experienced.
对于丰田司机所经历的任何事故，我深表歉意。
It was 15 years before GM took the lessons of NUMMI seriously, and they spent the next 10 years slowly implementing what it learned.
15 年后，通用汽车才认真吸取 NUMMI 的经验教训，并在接下来的 10 年里慢慢实施所学到的知识。
And all the time, the NUMMI plant kept pumping out vehicles-- 6,000 a week on average, two shifts a day.
自始至终，NUMMI 工厂都在不断生产车辆——平均每周生产 6,000 辆，每天两班制。
Toyota got what it wanted out of the deal.
丰田从这笔交易中得到了它想要的东西。
A year after starting NUMMI, it began opening other factories around the US using what it had learned in Fremont.
NUMMI 成立一年后，它开始利用在弗里蒙特学到的经验在美国各地开设其他工厂。
GM and Toyota continued to run NUMMI together, until 2009 when GM went bankrupt and pulled out, leaving Toyota to run the plant alone.
通用汽车和丰田继续共同运营 NUMMI，直到 2009 年通用汽车破产并退出，留下丰田独自运营该工厂。
Now Toyota has decided to pull out of the plant.
现在丰田决定退出该工厂。
It's their only unionized plant in the United States.
这是他们在美国唯一一家有工会的工厂。
Next Thursday, NUMMI will produce its very last car, a Corolla.
下周四，NUMMI 将生产其最后一辆汽车：卡罗拉 (Corolla)。
4,500 people will lose their jobs.
4,500人将失去工作。
This is the first factory Toyota has shut down since it was founded 73 years ago.
这是丰田成立73年来关闭的第一家工厂。
Toyota is not perfect.
丰田并不完美。
GM is not perfect.
GM并不完美。
But I think anyone who touched NUMMI will never forget it.
但我想任何接触过NUMMI的人都不会忘记它。
One last time, that's John Shook, the first American Toyota hired for NUMMI.
最后一次是约翰·舒克 (John Shook)，他是第一个为 NUMMI 雇用的美国丰田公司。
It does represent something that was special at a point in time.
它确实代表了某个时间点上的特殊事物。
It was a laboratory.
那是一个实验室。
My learning curve, it wasn't just a curve, it was a 90 degree right angle.
我的学习曲线，它不仅仅是一条曲线，它是一个90度的直角。
I loved every minute of it.
我喜欢它的每一分钟。
And almost every one, I think you'll talk to, who worked on NUMMI will say the same thing.
我想，几乎每个在 NUMMI 工作过的人都会说同样的话。
I'm so fortunate that I ended my career in the auto industry at NUMMI.
我很幸运，我在 NUMMI 结束了我在汽车行业的职业生涯。
Rick Madrid retired from the assembly line in 1992.
里克·马德里于 1992 年从装配线退休。
I just hate to see the plant close-- oh, that just hurts me.
我只是讨厌看到植物靠近——哦，那只会伤害我。
End of an era.
一个时代的结束。
It changed my life from being depressed, bored-- and like my son said, it changed my attitude.
它改变了我的生活，让我不再沮丧、无聊——而且就像我儿子说的，它改变了我的态度。
It changed me all for the better.
它让我一切变得更好。
I really hate to see it go.
我真的不想看到它消失。
I look at cars, and I see a lot of the cars that we built.
我看汽车，看到很多我们制造的汽车。
That's Billy Haggerty, who ended up putting in 18 years at NUMMI without a vacation day.
这就是比利·哈格蒂 (Billy Haggerty)，他在 NUMMI 工作了 18 年，没有休假。
He says just the other day he saw one.
他说就在前几天他看到了一个。
I just seen a-- what was it-- '86, '87 Corolla, pulled in right over around this corner here.
我刚刚看到一辆——那是什么——86年、87年的卡罗拉，就停在这个拐角处。
I was heading for the bank, and I just looked at it, said, boy, that one's old.
我正要去银行，我只是看了看它，说，天哪，那个很旧了。
I looked down, it was a Corolla.
我低头一看，是一辆卡罗拉。
I know we built it, right there.
我知道我们就在那里建造了它。
It's still running.
它仍在运行。
It's still kicking.
它还在踢。
It feels good.
感觉很好。
This is also NUMMI's legacy.
这也是 NUMMI 的遗产。
In the end, it's not just a symbol for so many things that went wrong with GM.
归根结底，这不仅仅是通用汽车公司许多问题的象征。
It's also a really good car plant-- one that turned out nearly 8 million high quality cars and trucks.
它也是一家非常好的汽车工厂——生产了近 800 万辆高质量的汽车和卡车。
Frank Langfitt is NPR's automotive correspondent.
弗兰克·朗菲特 (Frank Langfitt) 是 NPR 的汽车记者。
Frank Langfitt's story about NUMMI was produced by me and Brian Reed.
Frank Langfitt 关于 NUMMI 的故事由我和 Brian Reed 制作。
NPR's Uri Berliner helped us edit it.
NPR 的 Uri Berliner 帮助我们编辑了它。
Our show today was produced by Lisa Pollak, with Alex Blumberg, Jane Feltes, Sarah Koenig, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike.
我们今天的节目由 Lisa Pollak 制作，与 Alex Blumberg、Jane Feltes、Sarah Koenig、Robyn Semien、Alissa Shipp 和 Nancy Updike 一起制作。
Our senior producer is Julie Snyder.
我们的高级制片人是朱莉·斯奈德。
Old Japanese TV footage in today's show comes from NHK in Tokyo.
今天节目中的日本旧电视片段来自东京 NHK。
[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS] Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where our online store is now back up in operation, and where you can find the new update of our iPhone app.
[致谢] 我们的网站 thisamericanlife.org，我们的在线商店现已恢复运营，您可以在其中找到我们 iPhone 应用程序的新更新。
This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.
《美国生活》由国际公共广播电台发行。
Support for This American Life comes from Kohler.
对《This American Life》的支持来自科勒。
WBEZ management oversight for our program by our boss, Mr. Torey Malatia.
我们的老板 Torey Malatia 先生对我们的项目进行 WBEZ 管理监督。
I overheard him in the hallway telling someone how surprised he was at the quality of our shows this year.
我无意中听到他在走廊里告诉某人他对我们今年演出的质量感到多么惊讶。
Because that was not a young workforce.
因为那不是年轻的劳动力。
And, you know, they were old, they were fat.
而且，你知道，他们又老又胖。
I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.
我是艾拉·格拉斯，下周回来，带来更多《美国生活》的故事。
This American Life is produced in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago and delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange.
《This American Life》与 WBEZ Chicago 合作制作，并由 PRX 公共广播电台传送到各电台。