No... I've been a maintenance worker.
If you needed "Engineering" to help you fix every problem you faced everyday in a production line, the Engineer would need to come to work with you every day.
If you stopped the production line until "someone higher up" came down to approve your changes, you'd better make sure you have a strong reason to do so as the company will be losing millions while you wait :).
You just solve problems all the time, every day, and it's really up to the technician to know when something requires notifying Engineering or not. Notify too much and they'll get rid of you for being annoying... notify too little and shit like this can happen, but in the very large majority of cases, it doesn't.
I haven't been a maintenance worker, but I've worked as an SWE in a company with a large IT dept. Sometimes it's faster to work around them to find solutions to doing your job. Both sides have good intentions but the IT dept. cannot move nimbly.
I don't have a problem with technicians solving problems. But as an engineer I would like to codify the solution so that A) we're implementing a controlled process and B) if there's a better solution out there I can make that recommendation or fix the system. When you take it upon yourself then problems only happen if you don't communicate.
> If you stopped the production line until "someone higher up" came down to approve your changes, you'd better make sure you have a strong reason to do so as the company will be losing millions while you wait
Then what was the whole point of the Andon cable lesson that American manufacturers had to learn from Toyota?
You just solve problems all the time, every day, and it's really up to the technician to know when something requires notifying Engineering or not. Notify too much and they'll get rid of you for being annoying... notify too little and shit like this can happen, but in the very large majority of cases, it doesn't.