What's interesting is that if you look at history, there are different 'assembly line' paradigms of management, one which could be maybe be termed 'classic Amer

What's interesting is that if you look at history, there are different 'assembly line' paradigms of management, one which could be maybe be termed 'classic American' style (which could be argued necessitated the rise of old-school unions, leading to anti-productive standoffs between management and labor), and the 'Toyota style' which ironically was founded/seeded in Japan by Americans which could not get larger American car companies to listen at the time. The 'Toyota style' could be argued as more responsive to worker initiative and fits better philosophically with software work. (And Agile is influenced by Toyota-way thinking too, though in a mutated form..)