The origins of empowered teams in japan

When car manufacturing was first moved over to Japan, the factory managers decided to run a string all the way across the production line. When any worker saw a quality issue in production, they would pull the string. On the first day, not a single car rolled off the production line. Eventually, the string got pulled less and less, and the quality of the cars began to increase. It was the employees who knew what the problems were with quality, and this new practice gave them the forum to communicate the issues higher up. Japanese cars became known for being of the highest quality. This was the origin of the empowered employees management style.