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GM Lordstown plant manager ecstatic for title
EDITOR’S NOTE — As 2014 winds down, The Vindicator is taking a daily look back at the people and events that made this year unforgettable. “The Vindicator Rewind” will highlight and update a memorable story from 2014.
By Kalea Hall
LORDSTOWN
Steve Notar Donato found out July 14 what the eighth stop in his career with General Motors would be.
It’s a special date because it just so happens to be his birthday.
His present this year was the title of plant manager at Lords-town.
This plant delivers about 10 percent of GM’s production in the U.S., makes the automaker’s best-selling car, the Chevrolet Cruze, and is one of the largest GM plants in North America.
“I was ecstatic,” Notar Donato said. “What an operation it was to take responsibility over.”
On Aug. 1 he replaced former plant manager Bob Parcell, who was promoted to manufacturing manager of GM International Operations based in Singapore.
While his family remains in Indiana until his son graduates from high school, Notar Donato, 50, now lives out of a hotel because of his recent appointment to the Lordstown plant.
He grew up in an Italian family across from Manhattan in New Jersey. Growing up, he never considered himself a “gear head.” He actually was going to be a doctor but decided against it after he saw his brother go through the program.
He would end up with a mechanical-engineering degree from the University of Notre Dame.
From there he was hired at his first gig with GM at a plant in Flint, Mich.
He laughs when he thinks of his brazen attitude back then at age 22. He told the company he wouldn’t start his new job until he got back from a nine-week trip. Naturally, they said that was fine.
“They saw something and I saw something,” he said.
He worked as a supervisor at the Flint metal center and stayed at the plant for 14 years. He progressed to different positions and left as a superintendent. In the years following, GM would send him to a plant in Lansing, Mich.; California; Parma, Ohio; Wentzville, Mo., and finally Marion, Ind.
Before he took on his current role, he was the plant manager at the Marion metal center.
Despite his lengthy career and many moves, he never once had the opportunity to come to Lordstown. But he did use it as a landmark to know when he needed to take an exit when driving home.
“I remember driving out to the plant to meet [my predecessor], and I am looking at the plant. And I am driving and I look back and it is still there — and I look back and it is still there,” Notar Donato said.
The plant has about 6 million square feet.
“This place is so large and so complex you cannot manage it,” he said. “There is no way.”
So he works with those in charge of different areas in the plant, he said.
“My job is to support them and to make sure they have the skills and tools they need to do their job,” Notar Donato said.
Before he came to the plant, he purchased a Cruze for his 17-year-old son.
“We were looking for something practical, safe and relatively inexpensive,” he said.
Notar Donato has never been interested in working for any other company but GM because of the opportunities the company has given him.
“Every job has its own unique challenges and its own unique people,” he said.