I feel lots of lean and kanban literature misses the point and it's a far cry from the real thing.

Toyota placed a lot of emphasis on producing things without alienating humans. E.g., they tried to remove muri, unreasonable burden on people.

Other lesser known engineering efforts approached the same problem from a different angle. E.g., Volvo attempted to build a plant that departed from Ford-type assemblies to improve worker satisfaction [1]. Volvo's approach was to let small groups build entire cars to give them a sense of connection. It was a success from a quality and cost perspective, but it never caught on.

[1] https://research.engr.oregonstate.edu/gwt/biblio/enriching-p...