For example, on a traditional assembly line in a car manufacturing plant, one worker might put the same bolts on car after car while others work on windows, fenders, painting and so on. Yet other workers specialise in car design, marketing, cleaning, accounting and so forth. Hierarchy and division of labour are the key features of bureaucracy. Other characteristic features are standard operating procedures and rules which describe the duties of workers. This results in the familiar 'red tape' encountered by clients of large service bureaucracies.
Workers follow detailed regulations, often causing frustrating delays.
A bureaucratic organisation can operate more or less the same irrespective of the identities of individual workers. As long as there is someone who can fill a particular slot and follow orders, operations will continue. Thus in a bureaucracy the workers are replaceable cogs. No one is essential. Even the top boss can be replaced and things will go on just about the same as before.