Yes! Systems are the problem here. He did not make that decision in isolation—there was some pressure from the supply chain, his manager, or cost that he would

Yes! Systems are the problem here. He did not make that decision in isolation—there was some pressure from the supply chain, his manager, or cost that he would have been punished for had he not made this decision. A fear or motivation existed which was the result of poor management practices or a fragile quality process at odds with many other variables. No matter how you slice it, this is a management problem, and a cultural problem. It is not an individual responsibility to ensure quality. If it is left to an individual, then things like this happen out of sheer statistical probability. The only thing you can depend on is human fallibility, so your systems should be designed for it; they should expect it, more than anything. We should all look at quality as a systems, management, and fundamentally cultural pursuit. Sadly, the individual getting the brunt of all the blame here will only worsen the cultural and management factors that caused it in the first place. Future employees will fear individual retribution, and will make rash, illogical, uninformed decisions in the future out of fear. This, too, will not be their "fault" but the fault of the company, the management, and the systems around them. Deming. Look him up. There's a reason this does not happen in Japanese car companies. There's a reason that when it does, individual employees are not blamed. The reason is critically important to the success of American manufacturing in the future.