I think its overgeneralizing, but mostly accurate to say that the human-free constructs built by the Germans are quite efficient, but the human processes, systems, and interactions by which they get to these other results are byzantine at best, Kafkaesque at worst.

Perhaps the two are even related. American companies will reach 3 9's of reliability for a device, call it sufficient, and ship a product. German companies will be engaged with not only internal stakeholders, but also various levels of government for weeks to months just to come to an agreement about what the acceptable threshold is (it's the highest asked for by the combined pool of stakeholders), and 18 months after the Americans hit the market, you'll have a wristwatch with 7 9's of reliability that costs 3x as much as the American one.

Actually we have(or had?) another, more common wording for that sort of bureaucraZy:

Schreibtischpingpong where you are the ball being table tennised from desk to desk :)

I never heard 'Büroflipper', which comes to mind when thinking about this. Being the ball in a pin ball machine.

Probably because it's too fast, compared to the latencies in real life. But that would apply to Schreibtischpingpong, too.

Don't axe the FAX, it's holy.

But fear not, its last disciples will die out soon.

By then we'll be fully digital, hold in check by Electrons bloated thrall, solely.

What a boon.