Unfortunately yes, there are managers out there who act that way and seem to equate "efficiency" with time spent occupied doing work (whether useful or not, in the end). A widget making machine that's only producing 25% of its potential most of the time is waste, in their view, and so they want it to run at 100%. But that produces excess, potentially unconsumable if there is no demand, output.
Or, if given many widget machines and noting that only one or a few are "necessary" (in theory), they retool or sell off the excess (probably not all at once, it's a little-by-little thing). Which leaves them unable to handle excess production when it's needed, or to handle when one of the machines is down for maintenance or repairs (which it will need more often, it's running at 100% so will breakdown faster and there's no time to turn it off for regular maintenance).
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Unfortunately yes, there are managers out there who act that way and seem to equate "efficiency" with time spent occupied doing work (whether useful or not, in the end). A widget making machine that's only producing 25% of its potential most of the time is waste, in their view, and so they want it to run at 100%. But that produces excess, potentially unconsumable if there is no demand, output.
Or, if given many widget machines and noting that only one or a few are "necessary" (in theory), they retool or sell off the excess (probably not all at once, it's a little-by-little thing). Which leaves them unable to handle excess production when it's needed, or to handle when one of the machines is down for maintenance or repairs (which it will need more often, it's running at 100% so will breakdown faster and there's no time to turn it off for regular maintenance).