the japanese culture teaches to master one thing. if you paint car doors on the line then you will paint car doors for 20 years before you can do anything else. i worked for a japanese company for 13 years and spent 3 months in shizuoka, japan for training. japan is way advanced in almost every aspect. environmentally, technologically, etc... they just have some weird fetishes though! haha
you are half right.
becuase the corporate headquarters for my company in japan do it differently.
operators here in my company are to place the same part in the machine everday for 8-9 hours and they still manage to put the part in backwards or just wrong causing the robot to crash.
in the japan company an operator has the same identical machine and parts as we do here. but this operator can troubleshoot any problems that arise and also do quality checks. if this operator in japan puts in the part wrong, causes the robot to crash or cannot identify any problems with the machine, or lets a bad part go thru the line they are fired on the spot.
here at my company they cant even push a button without causing problems. but they also know they wont get fired for their stupidity.