'Industries' Archive
The answer appears to be “no.” The marriage in question is the 25-year partnership between General Motors and Toyota Motor in a joint venture, New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. — widely known as NUMMI.
GM this week gave out a brief statement that it could not agree on future product plans with Toyota. The NUMMI plant makes the Pontiac Vibe sport wagon for GM, and production of the Vibe is set to end later this summer — well ahead of the scheduled phase-out of the Pontiac brand.
GM said its 50% interest in NUMMI would stay with “Old GM” — the bankrupt carcass of bad assets and debt that will be left behind when the company emerges from Chapter 11, which could be next week, if the Obama administration’s auto task force can muscle the company’s case through bankruptcy court. “New GM” may be out of bankruptcy reorganization in 40 or fewer days, which would top Chrysler Group’s record of 42 days.
At the NUMMI plant, which is hailed as a highly efficient American implementation of the vaunted Toyota Production System, the UAW-represented workforce makes Tacoma pickups and Corolla sedans for Toyota to sell in North America. What happens to the NUMMI plant now is a big question for Toyota and its new president, Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the automotive manufacturer’s founder.
As the global downturn in the automotive industry took hold last year, Toyota called a halt on completing its new plant in Mississippi, which was going to build the Prius hybrid. Rumors abounded that Toyota would convert NUMMI to Prius production in light of high demand for the third-generation Prius, one of the few car models in the world that’s garnering pronounced popularity. Toyota officially quashed those rumors, however.
Akio Toyoda has a thorny problem in pondering the fate of NUMMI. The factory has long outlived its purpose and value as an experiment in cooperative production. It’s not the traditional practice of the giant Japanese automotive manufacturer to shutter a factory, lock the doors, and throw away the key, as Chrysler and GM did with so many North American plants. (The sprawling NUMMI factory was a GM plant until it was closed in 1982.) Toyota doesn’t do big layoffs. NUMMI is the last car plant in California, it has a unionized workforce of some 4,700 employees, and it’s a highly visible employer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Pulling the plug on NUMMI would be a public-image nightmare for Toyota. Not that it would slow down sales of Toyota vehicles in the US any more than the recession already has, but it would be an international liability to the corporation’s image.
BTW, the NUMMI plant is a few miles north on the Nimitz Freeway from the Great Mall of the Bay Area — a facility that was a Ford Motor plant from 1955 to 1983 and which was redeveloped as a giant shopping mall in 1994. Maybe that could be the future of the NUMMI factory, as well, although the mall business isn’t what it used to be, either.
French investigators say that Air France’s Flight 447 did not break apart in the air, as was thought early on in the investigation. It slammed full force into the ocean and broke apart on June 1, off Brazil’s northern coast. All 228 passengers on the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris were killed, making the crash the deadliest in Air France’s history.
Investigators came to the conclusion the Airbus A330 aircraft was intact at the point of impact by examining the wreckage gathered from a wide area in the Atlantic Ocean. But they still don’t know what made Flight 447 crash. They need the plane’s black box (its digital flight recorder) to know for sure, and it’s at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
And now it’s too late. That’s because the black box (a misnomer as it is actually bright orange), which contains important information about the speed, altitude, and pilot communication, only emits locator signals for about 30 days after a crash. The 30-day mark was July 1. French investigators are cutting off the search for the black box on July 10 — when everyone agrees the black box’s batteries will have surely died.
Even the mini-submarine used to explore the ill-fated Titanic hasn’t turned up the black box. Weak signals were detected in June and investigators dispatched the Nautile. The mini-sub will continued to comb the ocean floor using sonar detection methods until mid-August — just in case.
Flight 447 vanished off the coast of Brazil on May 31 after flying into violent thunderstorms. A flurry of automatic messages were sent from the plane before its disappearance and show that multiple system failures occurred. Search teams have found the bodies of 51 of Flight 447’s 228 passengers, including the plane’s captain.
It seems obvious it’s time to re-think the black box; not whether it should exist but rather how it should exist. Maybe it should be a “virtual” black box — one that sends the info to a computer on the ground — so that no one has to launch a very costly deep-sea expedition to find it. People say the technology exists.
Now investigators have another perplexing question on their hands: Can they solve the crash without the black box?
Drugstore operator Walgreen aims to redefine the term office visit by allowing you to visit the doctor at your office or workplace. After blanketing the nation with more than 6,900 drugstores, retail growth opportunities are slowing and the company is looking for new ways to expand. One area that Walgreen is giving plenty of attention is its Take Care Health Systems (TCHS) business, which manages more than 700 clinics inside Walgreen stores and at worksites. (Customers include QUALCOMM, Goodyear Tire & Rubber and Toyota Motor.) The company recently told Chicago’s Daily Herald that it plans to open “several thousand” work-site health clinics in the coming years to get in on the $7.3 billion market for employer-provided care.
With businesses struggling to reduce employee health care costs and the country on the verge of major health care reform, one could argue this is an idea whose time has come. The work-site clinics provide primary-care physicians (which I understand are in short supply already), nurse practitioners, nutritionists, and other health-related services. Walgreen bought TCHS in 2007 and made two follow-on acquisitions — I-trax and Whole Health Management — in 2008 in a bid to diminish its reliance on retail stores for growth and to diversify into health and wellness services. In January Walgreen launched “Complete Care and Well-Being,” a workplace program designed to cut costs for employers and improve access to health care for employees. The work-site health centers may be staffed by from one to 50 employees (depending on the size of the client) and be paired with Walgreen pharmacies and discount prescription drug plans.
This all sounds good, but I can’t help but think about the school nurse. Not to bash all school nurses, but the ones I encountered during my school days, and more recently during my children’s education, hardly inspired confidence. (My fifth grader swears her school nurse treats everything with a cough drop.) On the other hand, my employer Hoover’s already provides flu shots, blood pressure screening, and other health-related services at well-attended company-sponsored health fairs. It would be convenient to be able to get a throat culture or other simple procedure at work. But beyond routine services, there are privacy issues to consider and I’m not sure all employees would flock to a company doc.
On a related health care note: The world’s largest employer, Wal-Mart Stores, has come out in favor of requiring employers to provide health insurance to workers, much to the dismay of other retailers, large companies, and most Republicans. In a letter to President Obama dated June 30, Wal-Mart called for “shared responsibility” in the form of an “employer mandate which is fair and broad in coverage.” Wal-Mart, which for years was chastised as stingy when it came to employee benefits, has improved its benefits programs considerably. Still, the National Retail Federation, which vehemently opposes mandates for employers, said it was “flabbergasted” by Wal-Mart’s position.
I hope Chris Kahle had a good first week at his new job at Crispin Porter + Bogusky. There’s no doubt he would let the world know since he had no objections telling everyone on Twitter he was unemployed.
In fact, that’s how the inventive Kahle got the job with Crispin. The former copy writer for Publicis‘ Vancouver office invited Twitter users to send messages, or “tweets,” on his behalf to the company’s co-chairman, Alex Bogusky. Kahle sweetened the pot, saying he would donate $1 to charity for the first 200 tweets. (No word on if Kahle made good on that.)
Bogusky was impressed by Kahle’s pluck but wasn’t sold on interviewing him or hiring him at first. Somewhere along the line, Bogusky changed his tune and did hire Kahle, who started at the end of June. It’s not surprising given Crispin’s unorthodox ideas, eccentric campaigns, and focus on trends in technology.
So Chris Kahle, what are you doing now?
Less than a week after Michael Jackson’s death, and the sharks already are circling.
This morning it was revealed that a 2002 will drafted by Michael Jackson stipulates that his mother, three children, and charities would split the benefits of his estate, estimated at more than $200 million. That will could see a judge as soon as this week.
A lawyer for his parents, Joe and Katherine Jackson, however, disputes that any will ever existed (perhaps, cynically, because Joe was left out of that 2002 will). And, to add spice to the brewing drama, in just the past few days at least one other will has evidently surfaced, which could throw Jackson’s already entangled assets into further disarray.
The bermuda triangle of Jackson’s finances will only make the process that much longer and laborious. In 2007 the singer’s assets, including Neverland Ranch and his 50-percent stake in the Sony/ATV Music Publishing catalog, tallied $567 million. His debts reached $331 million, leaving Jackson with a net worth of $236 million.
Here’s the biggest shocker, though: According to financial documents prepared by accountants Thompson, Cobb, Bazilio & Associates and obtained by the Associated Press, Jackson had little more than $668,000 in cash in 2007.
(Another estimate puts Jackson’s debt at around $500 million, which would certainly put a crimp on his net worth.)
It was no secret that Jackson’s planned “This is It” performances at London’s O2 Arena were, in one way, a debt-relief vehicle. Promoter AEG Live had already sold $85 million in tickets for the 50-date show by June 25, and it was expected to be the highest-grossing concert event ever.
AEG Live said it would return money and fees to ticket buyers, or, alternatively, send a ticket (designed by the Gloved One himself) as a souvenir. “This is It” indeed. Unclaimed cash would go to cover production costs (estimated at up to $30 million) with the rest returning to Jackson’s estate. And depending on Jackson’s cause of death, AEG could join other creditors and family members already lined up to grab a piece of the pie.
However the Jackson empire is carved up, though, don’t expect any swift decisions. Alongside his legacy, his finances will be news for a very long time to come.