).
I'm still amazed how well your Spamcan burner works in a draughted environment, given the amount of variables that introduces, it's one hell of an achievement. :applause: ....that's NOISY!
</p><p>Well I just have to wade in to defend Toyota Neil. There is so much abuse of the "lean" terms which people use as catch phrases without any grasp of what they really mean. Sounds like your bosses have been at the wrong end of some consultants.</p><p>I worked for 15 years with Toyota, sometimes quite closely and they are the very best company I have ever worked with and by a very big margin.</p><p>And putting this in the light of the current thread, the first step on a long journey to becoming leaner is to understand what customers value. Someone has put cost above value in the small scale narrow gauge live steam market. Many people appear to value a quiet loco. It seems to me a mistake to cheapen the burner at the expense of something customers value so highly. Another big mistake is to assume things are expensive to make when often they are not.</p><p>Anyway don't get me started...New Haven Neil - 26/11/2009 8:04 PM I ended up reading up on Taguchi for about an hour at work this afternoon after reading Graham's post - oops - reminded me how much I had forgotten, so to speak!! Stats always did grind me down rather.....nothings changed in 30 years!!!!! Nowadays it's all 'lean' principles and such like I have to deal with - thank you Toyota/Toyoda, for nowt! Ruined terminal 5 apparently.....I like to remind my bosses of this....
</p> </p><p>That isn't strictly true Neil, we are allowed to use them, did in the first year in fact. But they aren't massively keen on us doing so, mostly 'cos the workshop runs more or less to capacity and it makes more sense for the chaps to know what they are doing to do it. Also, they don't have to fill in armfuls of health n' safety forms...