tl;dr: The andon cord isn’t a tool–it’s a trust signal. Toyota’s thousands of line stops reflect psychological safety and leadership support. Ford’s rare pulls reflected fear and mistrust. Lean succeeds or fails on culture, not mechanics. In 2007, a BBC article about lean manufacturing included a stunning detail. Workers at Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky plant were pulling the andon cord — the mechanism that signals a problem and can stop the production line — roughly 2,000 … Continue reading 2,000 vs. 2: What Andon Cord Pulls Reveal About Toyota and Ford