Comment by wisty
2 days ago
Toyota has tonnes of heirarchy.
Their "andon" just means that if anyone suspects a fault, they raise a red flag (old school andon - a literal flag, US companies heard it and made it an app lol) and the line goes down until it's fixed.
This isn't anarchy or even democracy. It's totally standard for anything safety critical, Toyota just treats a flaw in a Corolla engine the same way most people treat airline crashes.
A US carrier group has tonnes of heirarchy but if the lowest ranked person sees loose spanner on the deck the whole thing shuts down instantly.
It is an interesting thing about the best military organizations is that they have hierarchy but also push a lot of responsibility downward. E.g. we don't see anything noble about The Charge of the Light Brigade
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-of-t...
An infantry platoon does have leaders, it does follow orders, it is the thin edge of a very long wedge, but it has a lived reality of the members improvising under pressure.