Work & business
Goods flows, inventory and the systems that get things where they need to be.
Spørretimen Explained
What do the numbers in a barcode mean? A walk through the GS1 standards – how a GTIN is built up, how the check digit is calculated, what the prefix actually says about country of origin, the keys beyond GTIN, and the move to 2D codes towards 2027.
What cabotage is, and which rules apply to foreign lorries in Norway: three operations in seven days, the four-day cooling-off period, the documentation requirement, the rules for buses – and why the arrangement exists.
The customs tariff explained: what a commodity code is, why the first six digits are the same worldwide, what the two Norwegian digits do, why classification is hard – and what the code actually decides.
An annual stock count that takes two to three months with two full-time equivalents. Can RFID cut it? This is my bachelor thesis from 2020 – the warehouse in numbers, what the pilot test actually showed, why tags on metal stopped answering, and what we could not answer.
How the tachograph and the driver card work, and what the driving and rest time rules actually say: nine hours of driving, the break after four and a half hours, daily rest, weekly rest – and what the Mobility Package changed.
How much should you order at once? The EOQ formula explained with a worked example, the elegant property at the optimum, why the cost curve is so flat that precision barely matters – and what lean does to the whole calculation.
How Formula 1 moves from track to track: what goes by air and what goes by sea, why teams keep several identical sets of equipment, how the cars are packed, and why the calendar is a logistics problem.
What do FOB, CIF, DAP and DDP actually mean – and where does the risk really pass? A walk through all eleven Incoterms 2020 rules, the split between risk and cost, what changed from 2010, and the most common mistakes in practice.
What is lean, really? A walk through the system Toyota built – value and waste, the seven wastes, the five principles, kanban and just-in-time, kaizen and PDCA – and through the criticism about redundancies, fragile supply chains and work pressure.
MRP explained from the ground up: why component requirements should be calculated rather than guessed, what a bill of materials is, and a full worked calculation from order to order date – gross, net and lead time offsetting.
How can a chip with no battery be read several metres away? A walk through RFID – the three parts, the frequency bands, passive and active tags, how it differs from a barcode, why metal and liquid ruin things, and why the technology did not take over everything after all.
Suez, Panama and the Arctic routes explained: why a few narrow places decide world trade, what Panamax and Neopanamax mean, why drought stops ships in Panama, and what the detour around Africa actually costs.
Scientific management and the Toyota Production System side by side: Taylor's stopwatch, the fabricated story of Schmidt, Toyota's andon cord, how extreme both systems really are – and what separates them.
The EU transport network explained: what TEN-T actually covers, the three layers and the 2030, 2040 and 2050 deadlines, the nine corridors, the requirements on speed, signalling and train length – and how Norway connects.
TEU, FEU and the container standards explained: what the unit actually counts, why the 40-footer dominates, what the number on the side means, and why the standardisation mattered more than the box itself.
The assembly line was not invented in the car industry. It came from the Chicago slaughterhouses, where animals were taken apart on rails. Here is how the idea was reversed, what happened to the price – and what it cost the people standing at the line.
Why a small change on a shop shelf becomes a large swing in the factory: the bullwhip effect explained, with the nappies that exposed it, the four causes, the toilet paper of 2020 – and what actually dampens it.
Two systems that have to talk to each other, and a project that often does not go to plan. This is my master's thesis from 2025 – what 22 practitioners and four consultants report as the causes of ERP–WMS integration failure, which measures they think work, and why the biggest number is not a technical one.
There are more subjects than there are episodes. Say what you would like to hear about, and we will know where to start.