The 5th tale: Minato Mirai in Oslo
This was taken at Oslo port more than 20 years ago. Seen behind is the royal palace. I had come to the same place long before, for the study visit of a shipbuilding factory. But it did not exist anymore. The same thing happened as that in the Minato Mirai in Yokohama.

This was when I accompanied our customer to attend a 3-week inspection of a large transformer at a factory located in a town close to Oslo.

When we arrived at the factory, there was nothing except for a large empty transformer tank. It was unbelievable to finish the process up to the testing within the scheduled 3 weeks, as the transformer is of very special type, combining 2 transformers, for power receiving and furnace feeding, in a single tank. The customer also looked puzzled, by murmuring huh?

The factory explanation was that they adopt 3-shift work and can do it without any problem. Namely, the factory operates for 24 hours a day, which corresponds to 9 weeks in our sense. Though it sounds like in the spinning industries in Meiji era, it was certainly not uncommon in the heavy electrical appratus makers in Europe.

Upon visiting the factory in the morning, we realized that everything had come to considerably advanced stages. If there is no problem in relaying the process between the shifts, it looked all right even for this type of product, and we finished the final testing as scheduled. Thanks to this, we could see the whole process making rare shell-type transformers from the winding start to the testing.

The exactly same thing happened when I accompanied another inspection tour to a transformer factory in the U.S. That time too, the customer inspectors looked really worried about the time schedule upon their arrival.