"Never Lie, Craft It"

Sorry for the last post guys.  It has been a very long couple of days.  We had two business visits yesterday and an awesome dinner at Per Norlin's house.

Business:

WirelessCar was the first company of the day.  This company was founded in 1999.  The company is very small considering it only has 400 employees around the world.  WirelessCar is located in 50+ countries and have worked on around two million cars.  Per day there are around six million messages sent.  My mind cannot wrap around that idea.  Martin Lundh was our presenter who is the manager of service and strategy innovation.  He had a very detailed presentation to tell us about their ideas and what they are doing as a company.  WirelessCar is actually a part of the Volvo Group company. It is a fully-owned brand with in Volvo Group and is privately traded.

A few of their customers are Audi, Volvo Car, BMW, Chrysler, Nissan, Infinity, etc.  It was definitely a shock to see Chrysler and Nissan in that list because those are not very big companies in the way of how the other companies are expensive and very up to date with all of the new technology.  I suppose this is their way of entering the market for those that do not have the funds to purchase such an extravagant car. 

Martin started off with a very interesting video.  There is a lot of new technology evolving with the fitness bracelet.  From what I knew of the fitness bracelets is that it calculated the amount of steps taken each day and that it monitors how people sleep.  What I found out is that it can do so much

more.  The bracelet can sensor when you will be waking up and start the car and the coffee machine.  Not only can it do that, but it can also tell the time, weather, and when to leave for which ever location with the information of the road conditions.  It can also sync up to your calender and send alerts for when the next meeting is or when to leave for the next meeting.

There is a major trend that is coming about.  Self-Driving Cars!  I am not a fan of self driving cars because there are so many issues that can come out of the self driving cars.  I do not understand the need for them.  People need to just work on time management.  Some of the cars they were talking about can change from manual to auto.  This would be a major problem in my eyes.  When if there is a shortage in the wiring and it transfers from the auto to manual?  The person behind the wheel is going to be too busy doing whatever they are doing and not be able to grab the wheel and prevent an accident.  If they do truly decide to go ahead with this idea they will need to think of absolutely every situation that could happen.  I personally do not like the idea.  They are looking for it to be 2025 for the first self driving car to come on the market.

The second business was Getinge Group.  Per Norlin was amazing.  He is the senior manager of automation.  When viewing is name it is Per Norlin M.Sc MBA.  The company is actually named after the village that it initially started in.  Getinge is a company that deals with infection control. They work with many hospitals to guarantee that their surgery tools are disinfected and ready to use when needed for surgery.

A little on the background of Per is that he worked at ABB for 20 years.  During those 20 years he moved his family to Detroit, Michigan.  He only lived here for about four years, but he still was working with ABB and that is how J.J. met him.  Now he has been working at Getinge for four years.  The company itself started in 1983.  A fairly new company that truly does not have many competitors.  In the future they do plan on having some competitors.  They are just in an industry that is not that big and fairly new. 

Getinge has about 13,100 associates and around 109 sales companies.  They also have 25 production facilities.  For awhile they were having an increase of 50% in sales each year.  Getinge did run into a small rough patch, but when does a company not have a rough patch?  As long as the company bounces back everything is great.  Getinge actually consists of three smaller companies, Medical systems, extended car, and the infection control which is Getinge.

When starting a new project Getinge goes through a four step process.  First, there is a user study,

then a work flow analysis, user case scenarios, and lastly the user design validation.  Without these steps there will be something missing in their product that will effect the sales more than people really think.  Every year they do go to Medica which is a trade show for companies.  In 2013, Getinge won the Red Dot Award.  This is a very big deal in this industry.

One thing that I took away from this presentation is how important communication really is.  Everyone needs to have the same understanding for anything to work properly.  Something that I already thought was important, but it was a shock to see how much greater this simple idea really is.  Understanding the customer's needs is the most important.  It is amazing how these simple steps can be ignored.

Lesiure:

Today was fairly busy so we did not have much down time.  The only down time we had was at Per's house.  Asa is an amazing cook.  She made so many different dishes.  I cannot believe that I ate pickled herring.  I am so glad that there was sauce on the herring so that I could not look at it.  If I would have seen the herring itself I probably would have not eaten it.  We also had pea soup.  I am not one for peas or soup so I was proud of myself for eating the entire bowl.

My favorite dish of course was all the sea food that we had.  Asa made many plates of shrimp, crab

legs, crab claws, and crayfish.  I ate at least one piece of each type of sea food.  We started making shrimp sandwiches and that was amazing.  It was funny watching Asa just sitting at the table peeling shrimp to help people out.  I have never seen so much sea food in my life.

It was great to learn about the traditions that Swedes have.  What we ate last night was more of a Christmas meal.  Something that was for a major occasion.  There are songs that they sing before eating the first dish.  In English the song is very interesting.  Talking about, "Let's go to hell with juice and tea."  It was great learning the song and singing it with Per and Asa.  With these songs there are drinks that go along with it.  It is pretty much a shot of Sch-nobs.  I had the first shot, but after that I was not going to have anymore.

Lastly, we had some amazing dessert.  It was a type of cake that had morange, chocolate, rice crisp, and frosting.   At first it was not that good because it was something completely new, but it was amazing once we started eating more of it.  It almost had a taste of popcorn which I know my dad would love.  It was a great time with some amazing people.  Their dog Alfred was so adorable.  He stole the show for sure.  He is only a year and a half so he was very playful.  He is still pretty skittish, but if you have the squeaking chicken he will love you. 

Asa did tell us this amazing story from when she lived in Detroit.  She had on this shirt that had

Swedish writing on it.  She was not concerned about anything because she knew exactly what it said.  Asa walked down to the school to pick up her daughter and son.  While waiting outside the principle came outside and said to her that she should probably not wear that shirt to school.  They understood that the words may mean one thing in Swedish, but in English there is a different meaning.  One of the words on her shirt being "slut" which in Swedish means end!  A very funny and interesting story.

Daily Reflections:

• Per and Asa live in the middle of no where.  (on the ocean!)
• Never lie, just craft it.
• Make sure you know the translation of words before you say them.
• I love seafood more than I thought.  
• Sweden has some amazing companies.