Cover Story

Lucky Trip to NUMMI!

On Thursday, April 3rd, lucky Diane Zhou got to go to NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing Inc.) for a field trip! Why lucky? Diane's class had 8 5th graders with “A” as their average grade. Those people were in the raffle, and 5 people were chosen. After 4 were drawn, Diane was so sure she wouldn't be picked. 6th graders in the same class (Diane is in a combination class) kept saying Diane was going to be picked, and sure enough, she did get picked! She felt so lucky.

Diane and the other 4 students (including GWN reader Nicole Sun) went to NUMMI with another 5th grade class by bus. Diane, of course, brought her beloved Gingy, who brought her pet Turtie. At NUMMI, tour guides introduced everything. Diane couldn't remember everything she learned! This is what she remembered: “There are four main words for NUMMI (all Japanese names): Jidoku – a process of something , forgot what it was; Kaizen – continuous improvement; Mudu – waste of time, energy, and things; and Kandan – process of eliminating waste. The four main processes to making a car: stamping – making the shape of all the metal pieces; painting – paint the pieces; melding – forgot, something to do with heating up; and assembling – putting the pieces together. The guide said getting a job at NUMMI isn't too hard and is a great job. At first when they asked who wanted to work there, some kids raised their hands. Then they explained that if you work at NUMMI, you get a free car (of course you return it when you quit the job) and a free tank of gas every week! Plus free medical insurance (I think)! They asked the question again and everyone raised their hands. They also one main thing to get the job is reliability. They check your high school attendance records, and if there are too many tardies, no job for you! Being there at 6 means being there at 6 in the morning, not 6ish.
“We went on a tour bus into the factory. We had to wear goggles for safety reasons. The guides said the goggles were ugly because when they were well-made before, people took them home as souvenirs and NUMMI was running out of goggles. Now there are ugly goggles. The workplace was like a mini city; there were streets, one lane on a side, and even stop signs! I thought NUMMI was just a big building full with machines and people work at NUMMI just to make sure the machines were doing the right thing. But no, there were many workers working there. The guide said over 5500 employees (plus many many robots too, from Japan) work at NUMMI. The robots knew exactly what to do. Not everything a car is made of is made from NUMMI; pieces come from other places around the globe too. Everyone cheered when harmless sparks came out of carving metal. We saw how everything was done, and in about an hour and a half around the place, the tour ended. I could never tell where I was! NUMMI is so big.”

Sounds like NUMMI is enjoyable, even though you don't really do anything. Nicole Sun told GWN, “It wasn't all that fun, but at least I got to waste class time!” For Diane, it was a very lucky chance for her to learn about cars and NUMMI. “I could never imagine what NUMMI was. My parents always said they would bring me [to NUMMI]...someday...but that 'someday' never came. I'm so lucky to be picked [in the raffle].” On Gingy's opinion, “NUMMI is so cool! I want to go again. So does my pet Turtie!” They all thought NUMMI was fun, despite all the noise there. Back in the classroom, Diane's friends were saying how lucky Diane was, but all the same, the class only did a little work and got to watch a movie about NUMMI and the movie “Runaway Ralph” so not too bad either.