Quality control is still a human activity.
When i order a custom excavator slew bearing in Southern Germany, right next to the Czech border, our supplier calls me and tells a dowel hole is .053mm out of tolerance. "Do we need to rework that, or do you give permission to carry on ?" Then i tell them its to center the inner gear teeth of the slew bearing to the pinions, which after 32.000hrs of offshore dredging, have more play than 0.053mm so we dont bother. "All right, could you then please write me a short email which says that you accept this deviation ?"
We, as Dutchmen, often wonder about Germans and their procedures. We are better in bespoke excavator modification than the Germans because we think out of the box more easily. But when it comes to quality procedures, the Germans are right at it !!
Yup, but thats France. The Belgian factory of loaders and tracked excavators in Gosselie is already closed and moved to China. I think 6 years ago now. The joke is that French and Belgians are on strike so often that they dont have time to take all their payd holidays
The Chinese, or workers from most Asian cultures, prove that they can follow orders as good as automated processes. Workers in Southern Europe (or any country with a Romanic language, generally) have different work ethics than where Germanic languages (German, English, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish) are spoken.