Referees at sporting events can fuel elation or outrage with their calls when it comes to a favorite team, but in truth, these people are needed to provide an impartial interpretation of the rules of the game.
In the world of design and manufacturing, the referee is the quality inspector, reading and interpreting the design drawing. Herein lies the problem in a world of modern high tolerance manufacturing, where an engineering design team communicates the manufacturing tolerances of a given part, and others downstream deal with interpretation about specification compliance while maintaining production output.