Jon was born in a small village in Telemark, Norway and grew up on a farm connected to nature and agriculture in a village where everyone knew everyone.
At the age of fourteen he had to move to a dorm in Bø in Telemark to attend upper secondary school and then to Trondheim to attend what was then called NTH, which later became NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
He graduated as a civil engineer in 1971 and started his career as a deployed private in the armed forces at Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk (KV), where he was part of a project for the introduction of computerized material and production management. He was affiliated with KV until 1989 in various roles, except for a short period where he was at Bryne in Jæren.
He entered various management roles early on, as early as 28 years old he became central planning manager for Brøyt where they produced excavators of 20 – 50 tons. A company that in many contexts could be seen as a small car factory: the large machines were produced on a line production, and the planning department was central in managing the lines and logistic, coordinating many subcontractors and planning projects for the development of new types and models.
In 1977, he became head of production of F16 Avionic in KV, where he saw the effect of changing from functional organization to cell production, where each cell had a product, or a product group. This resulted in radical changes in production flow, shorter lead times and better resource utilization than when resources were placed in functional teams.
During the eighties he was production manager for central production in KV and later Norwegian Defense Technology, during this period many large defense projects were carried out that involved both new production and maintenance. Subcontractors were widely used in both Norway and neighboring countries, and he learned a lot both from implementation in his own organization and in cooperation with the subcontractors who in many cases were particularly efficient small and medium-sized enterprises.
For a short period, he entered and became general manager of Kongsberg Industry, a labor market company where they produced tools, an experience that in many contexts gave he a new view of what fates life can entail, without this being attributed to the individual's lack of effort, competence or morality, but only circumstances that everyone can come to experience, if they are unfortunate.
In 1992 he joined the National Institute of Technology in Norway. He became head of a section within productivity development, and eventually department manager for engineering department where, among other things, productivity development and quality advice were key areas. In 2004, a team was established with Lean as the main task where he was the leader in the period up to 2010. TI was a key player in several projects in the business sector, great course activity was carried out, and for example a quality management school and a Lean school were built up.
From 2010 to 2016 he was Lean Manager at NSB Material, before retirement.
He still lives in Kongsberg with his wife. They have four children and as a pensioner a lot of the time goes to keep an eye on the children and their families. They can look back on many years of orientation and walks in nature, as well as basketball and hall sports and eventually football as important interests. As a pensioner, he has also written the book OKTAV, and served as a trainer within Lean with an emphasis on strategic management, strategic continuous improvement and how to carry out a Lean transformation as described in the book.
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