Another worker, who would identify himself only as Mr. Xiao, started as an assembly-line worker almost three years ago, just after graduating from a technical school in central China, where Hon Hai recruited him.

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What coal miner or assembly-line worker jumps at the offer of overtime when he knows Uncle Sam is going to take sixty percent or more of his extra pay?

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One goal of this approach is to eliminate non-value-added activities in Chrysler plants in a thoroughgoing way that the company never has attempted before, down to shaving steps required by an assembly-line operator to complete a given task by asking the worker to redesign the job.

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In most high-tech fields today, the know-how needed to make a component, sub-assembly or finished product has progressed too far and too fast for the average worker to be able to propose any useful innovations.

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In addition to the Dreamliner assembly line at its Seattle-area factory, it built a new 1, 000-worker factory in South Carolina to handle the demand.

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