This way of "thinking" is what has happened to manufacturing industry in the states.
It works totally fine in factories staffed with thousands of "poorly educated" workers in China, but not in USA. Why?
The end result is that you have great jobs, but no good jobs. Because you've eliminated room for them in the economy.
From what I see, any deterministic back-office job that can be documented is gone by 2024 in leading enterprise companies (various tech). With first-order analysis jobs following in another 5 years (basic feedback ml).
In critical professions, there's a labor-vs-capital struggle. There's a critical shortage of workers (e.g. a nurse can get a job anywhere, tomorrow), but they're seen as cost-centers by the for-profit companies that are managing most of the employers (i.e. hospitals). So you get sluggish wage growth and chronical overwork / shortages as the management companies optimize for financials by delivering just enough service.
This was exactly what I remember, and literally the guy will take a tool that is not a hammer, a screw-wrench, and hit the shit out of the machine like it was a hammer, and then loose some screw, and then bang-bang again, and then tighten some other screw...
Even the young, like 26 y.o. guy , from faraway Sichuan Province thats works doing this will receive a respectul title...
... and will be called a "Gong" (engineer) For example, if the guy's name is Zhao, he will be called with respect even by the bilionaire owner of the factory with the name and title: "Zhao Gong".
Some old Eletric/industrial design like 66 years old are making good bucks still kicking, no one is at Key West drinking margheritas...
China tends to have a much hire ratio of supervisors on the actual assembly room floor as opposed to in the office. In the west, many would consider it micromanaging.
Not sure if would have made a difference in your case, but just wanted to mention it.