DB.
To answer the question 'has OC eng ever been to Basrah', Errrr NO!
In fact no management above Flt Lt has ever been down to see how things work here, on the J side of life anyway. The other Dets in this part of the world have a minimum of the Sqn WO to fend of interfering busy bodys that this place tends to generate, but not us.
On a lighter note, talking to Aussie J engineers yesterday, they cannot believe that we have gone back to a single line running twin fleet ops after they tried it and then canned it because of the flight safety implications. Oh well.....
As far as lean goes, there have been so far in industry 6 or 7 variants of this system and every time the 'inventors' of the system try it in an engineering environment it fails, so they go away and call it something else. Lean works well in a manufacturing environment where processes can be removed saving time and money(manpower), but in an engineering environment where the work is flexible and non-routine it cannot be adapted as it removes the flexibility and skill base from that environment.........sound familiar!!!!!!