Mark Hogan, a former GM Executive, has passed away at 71 years old.
According to a report from Automotive News, Hogan died on April 16th. He was responsible for General Motors’ collaborating with Japanese-based automaker Toyota on the NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing Inc) manufacturing plant in San Francisco, California. He earned his master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University, and joined General Motors back in 1973. Hogan also oversaw GM’s Brazil operations for a period of time.
Following his stint at General Motors, Hogan was hired by then-CEO Akio Toyoda to work as one of Toyota’s first outside board members. Toyoda was attracted to Hogan by virtue of his straight-talk and probing questions, which earned the respect of Toyoda, who later sought out his expertise. As the first foreigner on the Japanese-based automaker’s board since 2017 – and the first outside director ever – the intent was to add diversity across the board and bring an American business mindset to the table. Another one of Hogan’s roles was to advise on Toyota’s Latin American business.
Hogan later retired from Toyota in 2018.
“It is with deep sadness that we learned our friend and former Toyota Motor Corporation Board Member, Mark T. Hogan, passed away,” Toyota said in a prepared statement. “Our thoughts are with Mark’s family and friends during this difficult time. He will be missed by all of us.”
Before the NUMMI collaboration, Hogan held a variety of management and executive positions with GM, along with several other companies, such as serving as President of Magna International, one of the auto industry’s biggest and most complex parts suppliers.
While serving as President of Magna International, Hogan worked to increase sales to Asian companies, likely serving to help make his transition to Toyota relatively seamless. In addition, he also brought Magna’s European full vehicle assembly concept to North America.
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Comments
The guy is a traitor for giving up american manufacturing secrets to the Japanese allowing to copy and improve upon their manufacturing- just in time, first in first out and reliance on vendors to improve quality.
Thanks and good bye.
Toyota was FAR more efficient at building better quality cars than GM in the 1980’s. He was assigned by GM to form NUMMI with the express purpose of learning Toyota’s manufacturing processes not the other way around.
He tried to bring back what he learned at NUMMI to GM but for the most part there were too many obstacles.
The BIGGEST roadblock, or obstacle, to Mark’s learnings was the UAW !! Mark was a great combination of listening, and improving. RIP, my friend.
A big affirmative on all your observations. I intentionally left the term “obstacles” open to interpretation.
As for Mark, I totally agree. A very smart, thoughtful, somewhat quiet yet approachable guy. Not at all arrogant which can’t be said of several high level GM execs back in the day.
A good man that passed way too soon.
You’re not very smart.
Traitor?
No.
At the time Toy was far ahead of gm in small car manufacturing. Nummi was established to enable gm to learn from Toy. Not sure how much was learned and applied.
Seems too young?
Rest in peace. A life well lived.
Wow! Ramble on, Timmy. Looks like you missed your morning meds again,
Thank you Mr Trump.
This is why AI is not ready for prime time. Perhaps in a few more years.
Would loved to have sat down with Mark Hogan and listened to his tales of the auto industry, especially in Brazil and Japan. Good stories are the best thing that we get out of life, at least if you are Irish.
A good man. May he rest in peace.
One of many people who worked for GM in California that found deaf management when they tried to relate to Detroit the automobile business tsunami that was building in California, headed to the rest of the country. Namely foreign competition that built better cars at less cost.
Should of ran for the hills and doubled down on what GM did best, not show the tsunami how to hit you harder.
The NUMMI experience should have helped GM improve manufacturing operations because so many GM managers spent up to two years on site. When they returned they were not given meaningful assignments to change behavior and culture. After working at Toyota I returned to GM and found the culture to resist the fundamentals of the Toyota Production System that supported the Value adders (production team members) and had trouble with the concept of the highest quality system achieves the lowest total cost and make happy customers.
GM continues to implement the basics of the Toyota Production System. When I returned to GM, the GM Global Production System Documents were better written than Toyota’s TPS documents. The only shortfall was the lack of a global quality standard because “each plant site was responsible for balancing cost and Quality”. The philosophy always resulted in low quality and high cost from 30 years at GM. Tesla spent years trying to achieve the same productivity as NUMMI and ranks low in the industry on product reliability and quality.
Mark was a progressive executive, good man and good friend. He is an example of the right type of leadership not afraid to ask questions and do the right thing for the business. He will be sorely missed in the industry.
RIP Mark
Philip