Not sure which Japanese school of management you're following, but I think Toyota-style goes against that. The process gives more autonomy to workers than, say, Ford-style, where each tiny part of the process is pre-defined.
I got the impression that Toyota-style was considered to bring better quality to the product, even though it gives people more autonomy.
It's a bit like Warren Buffet saying he only wants to invest in companies that could be run by an idiot, because one day they will be.
Edward Deming actually worked with both Toyota and Ford, perhaps more foundationally at Toyota, bringing his process-based-quality ideas to both. Toyota's management style is based around continuous process improvement, combined with the employee empowerment that you refer to.
You're also describing the software development process prior to LLMs. Otherwise code reviews wouldn't exist.
Use of AI seems to be a regression in this regard, at least as currently used - "look ma, no hands! I've just vibe coded an autopiliot". The current focus seems to be on productivity - how many more lines of code or vibe-coded projects can you churn out - maybe because AI is still basically a novelty that people are still learning how to use.
If AI is to be used productively towards achieving business goals then the focus is going to need to mature and change to things like quality, safety, etc.
With humans and code reviews now two humans looked at it. With LLM and code review of the LLM output now one human looked at it, so its not the same. LLM are still far from as reliable as humans or you could just tell the LLM to do code reviews and then it builds the entire complex product itself.
0. The dawn of video games had many titles with 1 person responsible for programming. This remains the case many indy games and small software apps and services. It's a skill that requires expertise and/or dedication.
Deming’s process was about how to operate a business in a capital-intensive industry when you don’t have a lot of capital (with market-acceptable speed and quality). That you could continue to push it and raise quality as you increased the amount of capital you had was a side-effect, and the various Japanese automakers demonstrated widely different commitments to it.
And I’m sure you know that he started formulating his ideas during the Great Depression and refined them while working on defense manufacturing in the US during WWII.
Third option: they want to automate all jobs before the competition does. Think of it as AWS, but for labor.
Quality needs to come from the process, not the people.
Choosing to use a process known to be flawed, then hoping that people will catch the mistakes, doesn't seem like a great idea if the goal is quality.
The trouble is that LLMs can be used in many ways, but only some of those ways play to their strengths. Management have fantasies of using AI for everything, having either failed to understand what it is good for, or failed to learn the lessons of Japan/Deming.