# 10 - Principles of Dynamic Work Design
Consider a well-known example of work and organizational design, Toyota’s Andon cord. In the Toyota scheme, a worker noticing such an issue is supposed to pull what’s known as the Andon cord (or push a button) to stop the production line and fix the problem. While the management literature has correctly highlighted the importance of allowing employees to stop the line, what happens after the cord is pulled might be more important. When one operator on the factory floor is struggling to complete a task in the allotted time, and so hit a yellow button, causing an alarm to sound and a light to flash. Within seconds, the line’s supervisor arrived and assisted the operator in resolving the issue that was preventing him from following the prescribed process. In less than a minute, the operator, now able to hit his target, returned to his normal routine, and the supervisor went back to other activities. A visual of this process can be seen below: What, from a work design perspective, happened...