> It seems difficult to imagine that hordes of industrial engineers haven't done the calculations on each of these methods countless times at all car manufacturing companies.
Yes, it's the Ford method: you hire the smartest people you can to lay out the best plan, and a bunch of interchangeable grunts to just execute. But it turns out that the person that has to do that work 40 hours a week has a much better chance to find ways to make it more efficient, and if you build a culture where that's encouraged, that's what they do. If there is "one secret trick", it's probably that an employee that feels that they own their work does a much better job than one that acts like a cog in the machine someone else designed.
Yes, it's the Ford method: you hire the smartest people you can to lay out the best plan, and a bunch of interchangeable grunts to just execute. But it turns out that the person that has to do that work 40 hours a week has a much better chance to find ways to make it more efficient, and if you build a culture where that's encouraged, that's what they do. If there is "one secret trick", it's probably that an employee that feels that they own their work does a much better job than one that acts like a cog in the machine someone else designed.