Read a plant-fast

In the early 1980s, when I was heading up the automotive seating operations at Hoover Universal (later acquired by Johnson Controls), managers from a Japanese competitor that supplied parts to Toyota asked permission to visit our plant. We agreed, on the condition that they reciprocate and because we believed they would learn little from a brief tour. The visitors spent less than an hour in one of our best plants, taking no notes. Eventually, we got to read their tour report, and we were shocked at the detail with which they had described our plant and our technology, right down to an accurate estimate of our cost of sales. Meanwhile, our senior managers had visited their Japanese plants and learned next to nothing.