You’re probably right about assembly-line production. However, IMHO, it takes a lot of skill to be able to bake all types of baked goods — cakes, pastries, pies, breads, etc., I’ve worked in remote construction camps, the pastry chef was the most important, and most difficult to replace worker in the camp.
Your pastry chef is not running an automated line that makes thousands of cakes a day.
See my post #82, it is not even assembly line type production where you have workers doing any sort of hands on work – it’s all automated save for someone at the beginning operating and pouring pre-measured amounts into a big automated mixing vat and someone at the end taking the boxes and putting them onto pallets or loading them onto trucks.
Comparing someone working at a Hostess factory or a similar operation a “pastry chef” is like calling those frozen Lean Cuisine dinners – “cuisine”.