The manager of the soldering area in a company that manufactures computer circuit boards asked the manager of the start station to shut down production for a few hours for emergency maintenance work on the soldering machines. The start station manager refused saying, "My job requires me to keep the production line going."

Consequently, the production line kept running, and the quality reject rate for products coming out of the soldering operation increased from virtually zero to nearly 50 percent.

Management learned about the quality problem, and ordered the production line to be stopped. The product rejects cost the company about $50,000.

As top management, to whom would you assign the responsibility for the $50,000 cost of product rejects?