Why GM Couldn’t Copy Toyota

In December 1984, a yellow Chevy Nova rolled off an assembly line in Fremont, California. Two years earlier, General Motors had closed that same plant, and the regional director of the autoworkers' union would later call its workforce the worst in the American car industry. Toyota hired most of those workers back. Within a year, the plant went from GM's worst to its best. Toyota let GM managers walk that factory floor for twenty-five years. But GM never managed to copy what happened there. So what were they looking for?