Audi and the German Work Ethic: No Time for Breaks, No Room for Mistakes
I think the first concrete examples of the professionalism, preciseness, and perfectionism of Germans was through the employees at Audi. The luxury German automaker proudly displayed its meticulous assembly lines filled with car-building robots, mechanical parts, and arduous workers through the two-hour factory tour we received.
The Audi employees on the production line were given ten-minute breaks, and as we observed, they were on the minute. Each assembly line was expected to keep up pace to produce the maximum number of cars, delays are seldom and rarely ever observed. The tour emphasized the perfection with which each car was produced, and it was clear that time was of the importance to the German company. If a mistake were made that was to cause delay in the assembly line, a whimsical little tune was played, like “The Pink Panther” theme song or likewise, as to “gleefully” notify the workers that there was a problem (meaning that the workers should immediately run to solve the problem)
It was strange for most of us Americans to observe such perfectionism and work ethic that the Germans seemed to display in their every minute of every task. There was never an idle moment, neither from the workers nor from even our factory tour – there was never once a break for the entire two-hour factory tour (nor after lunch, with the one-hour museum tour). It was clear that Germans take their jobs very seriously, conduct themselves with professionalism, and maximize their time spent working to the fullest extent.