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Christ -

After noticing you reference "lean", I googled "nummi lean" and found this article (again) :

LEAN AT NUMMI | Manufacturing Engineering | Find Articles at BNET

To compete effectively, the lean manufacturing tools of TPS help the 5.3 million sqft (492,000 sqm) NUMMI plant manufacture cars for Toyota and GM that include the Toyota Corolla and Pontiac Vibe subcompact cars, which are built on the same manufacturing line, and Toyota's Tacoma pickup trucks. Created 21 years ago, the 50:50 joint venture gave Toyota its first experience operating a North American manufacturing plant, while offering GM managers a chance to see first-hand the famed Toyota Production System upon which most modern lean-manufacturing concepts are built. NUMMI's current annual production capacity reaches 245,000 cars and 165,000 trucks, and the facility includes plastics, stamping, body and weld, paint, and assembly operations.

It agrees with your position that GM isn't absorbing the lesson.

As you arleady must know, one of the fathers of the Japanese Quality Miracle is W.E. Deming :

W. Edwards Deming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and consultant. Deming is widely credited with improving production in the United States during World War II, although he is perhaps best known for his work in Japan. There, from 1950 onward he taught top management how to improve design (and thus service), product quality, testing and sales (the last through global markets)[1] through various methods, including the application of statistical methods.

CarloSW2