What is Good for General Motors? - Solving America's Industrial Conundrum

Tom Crumm’s book, What is Good for General Motors?: Solving America's Industrial Conundrum, offers a compelling insider perspective on the challenges and missed opportunities that led to the decline of General Motors and, by extension, the broader American auto industry. Drawing on his extensive experience as a former GM executive and strategic planner, Crumm provides a deeply informed analysis that goes beyond the common narrative blaming unions for the industry’s struggles. Instead, he places significant emphasis on management’s strategic errors, including the misguided replacement of skilled workers with automation and failures in leadership, corporate culture, and strategic planning.

Central to the book is Crumm’s involvement in the Saturn project, a groundbreaking initiative launched in 1985 under CEO Roger Smith’s vision to rethink GM’s approach to design, manufacturing, and corporate culture. Saturn serves as a case study of both the potential for innovation and the pitfalls that ultimately hindered the revival of American automotive manufacturing. Crumm highlights key lessons from Saturn’s rise and fall, emphasizing the critical importance of integrating technology with workers, empowering employees, fostering constructive labor relations, and maintaining strong supplier partnerships and vertical integration.

The book focuses on practical aspects of product development, engineering, and manufacturing—areas often overlooked in broader analyses of the auto industry’s decline. Crumm argues that a return to quality manufacturing and smart strategic planning is essential to restoring global competitiveness and reviving the American industrial base.

His analysis extends beyond the auto industry, proposing a roadmap for economic renewal that could rejuvenate the manufacturing sector and protect nearly a million American jobs tied to auto and component industries.

Crumm also stresses that the biggest threat to a worker’s job is an unprofitable company, advocating for a shift away from adversarial labor-management relations towards cooperation that benefits both parties. His message is one of hope and practical solutions, aimed at industry groups, manufacturing associations, and the broader public interested in understanding and reversing the decline of American manufacturing prowess. By focusing on actionable changes in engineering, manufacturing, and strategic leadership, this book offers valuable insights for anyone seeking to understand what went wrong and how America’s industrial sector can be restored to world-class status

Thomas A. Crumm is a third-generation autoworker born and raised in Flint, Michigan. His grandfathers and father began their careers with tools in their hands and rose to play important roles in the company. Tom's career began in the same way. His successes in improving operations and designing manufacturing systems would take him to every corner of GM s diverse operations. His many successes in the leadership of manufacturing and engineering activities moved him steadily up through the ranks and into roles of increasing responsibility.

Tom's financial education came during his six years in Roger Smith s Corporate Strategic Planning Group (think tank), when he was afforded the opportunity to attend executive programs at Harvard, The Wharton School and then Northwestern. But if asked, he will tell you he is a hands-on industrial engineer.

Tom Crumm was appointed to lead GM Chairman John Smale's Scenario Planning Staff in the mid-nineties in an attempt to alter the course of General Motors. Tom was also the appointed visionary for Roger Smith when he attempted to expand the Saturn experiment across the corporation.

After GM, Tom became a consultant to Adaptive Materials Inc., which develops and produces solid oxide fuel cells for defense applications. He is a former member of the BOD and CEO of Hypercar Inc. joining them as they spun off from the Rocky Mountain Institute to design and build of a prototype of a full sized family sedan powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that could achieve the BTU equivalent of 100 mpg. The prototype weighed less than 1800 pounds when development was complete. Its steering, brakes, suspension and all other controls were achieved using lightweight electronics. The structural body panels were made of carbon fiber.

The lessons learned from these two attempts together with Tom's experience in raising funding and pulling together a proposal for how to put Hypercars into production, and his recent attempt to launch a consortium of companies to build vehicles for federal fleets, all serve to support the conclusions and recommendations in the book.