The beginning of lean for GM happened at the current Tesla plant in Fremont, CA.
“The key to the Toyota production system was a principle so basic it sounds like an empty management slogan. Teamwork. Back home in Fremont, GM supervisors ordered around large groups of workers. At the Takaoka plant, people were divided into teams of just four or five, switched jobs every few hours to relieve the monotony, and a team leader would step in to help whenever anything went wrong.”
Workers are people too and treating them as such, instead of as low IQ robots, will lead to better work output and even ideas to improve the way work is done. The workers know their work and surrounds better than any manager.