GM's Mary Barra: Tuning Up Automaker's Plants
March 27, 2008

By Kate McLeod

Mary Barra isn’t the new kid on the block. She is a tested General Motors veteran. She isn’t even that new to her new job as vice president of global manufacturing and engineering. Barra, a native Michigander, has been around GM — in particular around manufacturing and plants — for 27 years.

We’re well beyond writing stories about the first woman plumber or jockey, or indeed the first woman anything. Barra is worth a story because of her job, global responsibility for stamping and die plants around the world — Poland, Brazil, Russia, China and yes, Wisconsin, among others. This is part of GM's new focus — trying to create one company out of many. At GM they think it is the key to survival.

Barra said her focus will be tuning up plants regularly so they run as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. GM uses the term “continuous improvement” and it is one of the five manufacturing principles it adheres to. The other four are standardization, built-in quality, short lead time and people involvement, which means line operators are supposed to have the ears of managers whenever they have a problem or suggestion.

“The best way I can help the customer and the company,” said Barra, “is to get rid of waste and produce products in our plant that customers want.”

How that happens is complicated by the size, character and demands of GM's various markets. “We introduce more than one vehicle a month around the world,” she said. Each product is built to the standards set by the market — requirements for cars built for China, for example, differ from those for America.

Juggling the variables is Barra’s forte. “GM assembles all vehicles with a specific build sequence that is common across all plants, and that makes it easier,” said Barra, who is also charged with ensuring the same safety, quality and response time for each plant. “We have sophisticated systems at GM which can be honed for different markets.”

Looking at the future, with so many changes about to happen, AutoObserver asked Barra what the trends are today in manufacturing.

“The key trend in manufacturing with every OEM is to be able to build many products in one assembly line. OEMs need to have the ability to respond to customer demands quickly and efficiently. You got to have the right product out there.

"Our ongoing work is to have the right systems and a good working relationship with product development. If we integrate product and process, then we have quite a wide bandwidth in which to work. My boss, Gary Cowger, always says, ‘People don’t buy manufacturing systems, they buy great product.’ Our job is to enable the latest product and design, not constrain it.”

Once upon a time, GM built 1 million Chevy Impalas in a single year. Those days are gone, which is why building a variety of vehicles on a single line becomes important.

Barra, 46, comes from a GM family — her dad was a diemaker for GM for 39 years. “I started as a co-op student, way back when,” she said. She came up through General Motors Institute (now Kettering University), earning her B.A. in 1985. She went on to Stanford as a GM fellow to earn her MBA.

“Manufacturing has always been the draw for me," she said. "There’s a real satisfaction when you put out X number of cars a day.

"But I also love the strategic part, thinking through complex situations and strategies with everybody at the table. I believe in the power of teams. Manufacturing and engineering are complex and we get the best product if we collaborate.”•

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