Harley-Davidson seemed like a great place to test this theory. Keith Wandell, the chief executive, told me that even during the company’s worst days, management never considered busting its union. Frankly, it couldn’t. The company has an “American blue-collar, working man” brand, Magee said, and to get rid of its union or to make its motorcycles in Mexico would have been catastrophic. The company knew it had to keep employing members of the International Association of Machinists and United Steelworkers, who were paid far more than nonunion workers in the South and several multiples of the going rate in Mexico. The company could only compete by redesigning the production system so that each worker created more value than they cost.

Harley tore down the existing plant and built a new one. Unlike most factories I’ve seen lately, the new plant in York has people everywhere. There are no robots on the main assembly line (they have various peripheral jobs); instead, hundreds of workers, operating in teams of five or six, manually build each motorcycle. This seemed like an expensive way of doing business, but Magee said that experienced, skilled workers, unlike robots, can constantly adjust to new information. The York plant makes four basic styles of motorcycle, but each has an array of customizable options. There are around 1,200 different configurations, and a new bike starts its way through the production line every 80 seconds. Virtually each one is unique, and workers have no idea what’s coming 80 seconds later. Surprisingly, robots can’t adjust on the fly like that.

Human beings can also solve thorny problems that lead to major inefficiencies, like that plastic piece that took an extra 1.2 seconds to install. Dettinger and a small team quickly came up with a fix — a tiny plastic latch needed to be set at a different angle — and saved Harley millions. (On the day I visited, he solved two other problems.) In fact, his entire job is to continuously monitor his small section of the production line and search for better ways to make motorcycles. There are 150 problem-solvers like him in the factory.

Harley’s very existence was in question in 2009. Today it is a manufacturing role model, and that has a lot to do with its workers. The average tenure of a line worker at the York plant is 18 years, and these workers are extremely devoted to the company. (“How many factory workers have the company logo tattooed on their arm?” Dettinger asked me.) Magee said there was no question that the workers were earning their relatively higher wages. Costs have fallen by $100 million at the plant and quality has improved even more significantly. Customer demand is extremely high, especially now that people can get a bike within a couple weeks of ordering rather than waiting a year and a half. Harley’s stock price is back near the peak it reached at the top of the bubble in 2006. Craig Kennison at the research firm Baird told me that “it’s certainly the best turnaround I’ve ever seen.” Recently, the York plant won the Oscars of manufacturing: an IndustryWeek Best Plants award.