A lot of German engineering/ideas are infact of British origin.

Presumably he means a rubber ring.

If German engineering is so good why do F1 teams like the UK so much - including Mercedes themselves

Go on tell us - is it the food?

Fish and chips

I see Audilover has resorted to posting ****e in this section of scoobynet considering his name is mud (****) in other marques. With any luck he will eventually f*ck off and take his S40, transit van and merc with him.

AN S40, HE DRIVES AN S40

and cleans other people's toilets with his tongue I expect

Actually, following Porsches attempts to incorporate Japanese methods into their design & manufacturing structure there was a sharp upturn in breakdowns, component failures and warranty claims, coincidence

In my opinion the OP is wrong, Japanese cars are now the best in the world, German car manufacturers just have the better PR companies

Can you evidence that? Not sure the figures I have support your view. I believe there was some increase around the shift in technology, i.e. from air-cooled to water-cooled.

It can be said with certainty that because of the change in methods Porsche did not go bust.

Rannoch

Sorry rannoch, your facts are slightly wrong

just after the war, Japanese quality was dire, they recognised that to move forward, they needed to make radical changes....

Enter W Deming, and J Juran, an American and a Romanian, they recognised that quality by engineering and sound statistical principles was the way forward. Unfortunately the major players at that time, the USA and the UK didn't share there views, and there ideas were shunned. It was the Japanese who saw the obvious way forward, and invited Deming & Juran to Japan, to teach them there quality practices. The Japanese embraced the principles, and the rest is history.

The Japanese saw that to resolve there problems, they had to start from scratch, the growing automotive industries, the Uk and the US had, relied in inspecting out problems, as opposed analysis and engineering out the issues.

You would be surprised at how many firms today, still rely on inspection to to solve quality problems!

All Toyota do when they have issues is flood the area with engineers, each looking at a particular discipline, then by gathering data they can pinpoint and rectify the concern, the difference is when they fix the problem, they do it perminantly.

All the Germans have done is taken these principles and techniques, and applied them.


Mart

well as long as we ar enot talking merc and BMW as they seem to have taken a step back in quality. audi still make nice cars. Japanese cars are still the best when you look at the whole car market .

You quoted seconds.

No they didn't ......AMG didAnd as already said "The Yanks" are now building German cars, BMW, Daimler Chrysler (Mercedes to the unknowing), even Mexicans and Brazilians build VW'sAnd the 3 Series outsold the Mondeo last year............come on Mondeo man make a comeback!!!

So true.I ditched my Audi for a Skoda which has been excellent (though I wouldn't mind another A4)

The BMW obsession is almost comical.Though I'm sure BMW don't mind a few brain washed UK residents bringing a few quid in.

i'm going to be brainwashed on thursday !!

CockLover

the Brits helped rebulid and re-man the VW factory after WW2, so take your choice as to why their industry is still thriving

Only the Germans would build a 2 tonne convertible and think its a great achievement!

Sorry, no disrepect to any Germans, let me rephrase, only Audilover would think that a 2 tonne convertible is a great achievement!

Not only is German quality a myth but so is German efficiency.

Germans make the most boring cars going, and germans buy them. over here a german is bread to think they need to own German car and will buy a low end German car regardless of whether they can afford it or not just as a status symbol so they are not out done by the neighbours. The fact that they could buy a Ford/Opel or a Jap car for half the price and get twice the value for money doesn't come into the equation.

They also have the most boring taste in colours, most Germans will buy a Silver car, just look in any German car park or drive downa German street and the majority of the cars are German and silver.

My Sonic Blue 7 year old scooby still gets looks round the tiny town I live in just because it stands out like a sore thumb, it is like a rose amongst a whole town of thorns.

The build quality of Mercedes is going down hill all the time, BMW is no better, BMW also nicked the Subaru 4wd system aswell. FYI the BMW plant in Munich has a whole heap of Jap cars on site including Evos and Scoobies where they systematical strip stela the best parts and build them into their cars. BMW do have some clever gadgets in their cars but having driven a number of BMW prototypes and heard some horror stories from on of thier R&D engineers I would not touch a BMW with a barge pole. Plus their eletronic drivers seat massaging system freaks you out and is feckin annoying.

you talking to me ???

No you idiot. AudiLover = CockLover

sorry but my mind reading is a bit sketchy today and as it was posted after mine ...............................and not being into playground rhyming slang ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Russians make the best cars in the World and AL needs a damn good banning.

In what way are they wrong?

Deming defined the management principles that enabled lean to be created but he did not create lean itself. The crucial elements of lean are the understanding and reduction of tac time and the level of information/complexity passed between production processes.

Demings management science could equally apply to traditional, reductionist production in which tac time can be high and there are multiple processes just as much as they can apply to the Toyota lean processes.

Deming was concerned with consistency and the creation and management of consistency which are crucial to lean, but do not define lean manufacturing.

I agree with everything in your post AND they are all contributors of lean manufacturing but do not define it.

Fair enough, but please compare like for like. I dunno abt Germany, but in France, EVERYTHING is on mains pressure, and that can be up to 15 bar!!!

Thus pipe joints are brazed or silver soldered. And no leaks allowed as failure could be a disaster.

At my house in the UK, I'm doing well to get 1.1bar from my cold water

Our plumbers aren't worse, just working to different standards.

Look at trains. The Germans copied the French high speed network, and the only changes they made resulted in a high speed derailment killing loads of folk.

The tilting trains now running all over Europe were invented where? The UK, then Thatcher sold the technology to the Italians, who ironed out the last of the small bugs and sold it back to us, among many others. Thatcher refused the APT any more cash to finish the project. Otherwise WE'D be selling it to THEM!

Alcazar

Pretty much sums up the UK though, loads of things are invented here but there seems to be absolutely no support to bring manufacture or bring those products to market. The UK has loads of specialists but nobody capitalises upon it.

Actually we brits build it, and its a stunner

and it can show most other cars a clean set of heels

Mart

F*cknell you actually agree for once

(sonly cos i do if for a living )

Mart

Have you been into Fiz(sp) at Munich? Its HUGE, the new distribution centre looks like its going to be something else too.

BTW show me a manufacturer (automotive) who dosent buy competitors products for teardown and evaluation!!! when i worked tier 1, we did it all the time. how else do you benchmark the opposition

Mart