Computer software has had a bad week. First the system at the Olympics went bananas, then it was announced that it was a software problem that made the Ariane rocket blow itself up. Now they set up play areas at their exhibitions."The toy industry is dominated by a handful of giants, mostly American, who are always on the lookout for companies to gobble. Last year one of the biggest, Mattel, laid siege to Meccano, and for nine months he fought frantically to rally his shareholders He succeeded by the skin of his teeth Mattel ended up with 45 per cent of the shares pledged But there is a silver lining for Mr Duvauchelle. He purged the disloyal shareholders, and now owns 55 per cent of the company.He does have his exit planned. In two or three years' time, he says, he will hand over to the managers he has trained, and look for other things to do.

It took us five years to convince them that children were more important than adults. "If all you do is concentrate on taking out costs you will not generate wealth, you will not generate growth, you will not generate job satisfaction, you will not generate well-being, you will not generate conviction and you will not be a winner. In a company you have to balance cost management with growth," Lewinton explains.He is immensely proud of the fact that TI employs 25,000 people around the world and he genuinely cares about them. "I worry about the people who give their lives to the company I worry about their families and about their education It is a huge responsibility," Lewinton says. "I worry about the customers because if you don't take care of them, then you don't take care of the employees and you don't take care of the shareholders I think we run a total company. We try and strike a balance between all these interests to create a quality company with a sense of responsibility and well-being."The Lewinton vision has now cascaded down among the senior management and his culture is now very much the TI culture There are plenty now to carry the torch. But despite his success and that of TI, Lewinton is untouched by complacency.

He sees the future through eyes which see limitations and challenges which others are blind to.He regards the quality of management as the biggest constraint on TI's growth "It is relatively easy to borrow money But there is no central bank of people," he points out. "It will be our ability to grow global managers who understand the company's culture, who have its trust and confidence and who have the ability to take acceptable risks which will drive our business over the next decade."He is worried that the barrage of criticism levelled against company directors will deter the best talent from going into industry. Hiring bright young managers (70 per cent of his staff are female - "I like women," he says) he marketed aggressively, first in France, then in Britain and the USA. At first the traditional hobbyists were suspicious of his concentration on the children's market "We said you can help us by helping kids' perceptions. His financiers told him to close the factory and import the parts from Asia He would not "I like factories, it's a very personal thing," he says. He also reckoned the 15 per cent cost-saving from importing would be more than balanced by the extra flexibility of manufacturing close to the market.He set about rebuilding the brand with gusto.

He brought the company under control but did not invest; when he put it on the market in 1989 it was very much a tiny operation.Mr Duvauchelle leapt at the opportunity because he was looking for an industrial consumer products company; that it was also a famous brand was a bonus. At 38 he was one of the top 15 people in the company, he had made a lot of money, and he decided it was time to start off on his own. He had plenty of merchant banking contacts, and after three months he heard Meccano was for sale The bankers were worried it would be too small for him "I said Meccano, Meccano - for me it was big. I could not believe it would be small."That Meccano was still alive at all was something of a miracle. From its peak in the 1950s the British group had slippeddownwards, unable to keep up with changing children's tastes After several ownership changes it collapsed in 1980 That was not the end of the brand though.