Started the day by visiting the nearby Harley Davidson factory in Kansas City. I’m not a bike person, but I appreciate craftsmanship and HD’s ability to gardner customer loyalty.
- all workers who drive HDs park in the very front of the building, there is a lot of pride in showing off their personal machines
- HD managers and factor workers and undistinguishable, they all wear identical clothing (mostly HD gear but it is not required) the only tie I saw was worn by a visitor
- managers and workers use the same dining area and parking
- managers and union leaders share the same office space
- plant workers in different cells are responsible for self-organizing and prioritizing duties
- all workers in each cell are required to switch off every job, every worker knows every duty of the job
- robots are cool, lots of precision robot work is performed, but hand-checked by humans
After the trip to HD, we hunted down a local bookstore (Prospero’s) where Jen found a couple of treasures and then walked around downtown KC. We found the library, which has a really impressive display of large books that decorate the outside of the library’s parking structure.
We also found a neat little market and picked up some fruit.
We headed back to the hotel and walked over to the crown center where we had a really unremarkable lunch. We took and hour or so out to check email and catch up with the outside world.