Make Good Use of Down Time

Toyota Keeps Idled Workers Busy Honing Their Skills Wall Street Journal (10/13/08) Linebaugh, Kate
Toyota's production line is taking a hit from the economic downturn and rising gas prices, but rather than lay off workers, the company is sending the idle ones into training courses to improve their skills and to find new and improved ways to make cars. Plants in Indiana and Texas stopped making pickup trucks in August; while about 2,000 workers are expected to start up again in November, another 2,000 will not be needed until April at the earliest. GM, Ford, and Chrysler are bound by union contracts to pay their workers even when they are idle. Toyota's workers are non-union and the company has vowed to never lay off full-time employees, which is why it is using the down time for quality-control and productivity training. Laying off employees for three months and then having to rehire and retrain new workers would be much more costly in the long run, the company says. Princeton plant manager Norm Bafunno says the training is already paying off, as one employee has designed a Teflon ring that prevents paint damage when electrical switches are installed on a car door. These kinds of improvements are what the company is hoping to gain from the training efforts, so that when production resumes, things will run even more smoothly.