Bjarne Berg Wig

Bjarne Berg Wig is a Norwegian veteran of the quality, Lean and learning organizations movement, who has had a significant impact on the proliferation of quality management and Lean practices in Norway. He was one of the first to introduce Total Quality Management (TQM) and Lean principles to Norwegian industry in the 1990s, and has since actively worked to disseminate knowledge about Lean and help Norwegian businesses and municipalities develop a culture of participatory improvement.
==Biography==
===Early life===
Bjarne was born in Gjøvik, Norway in 1956. During his teenage years he became interested in world affairs. While being trained at Norsq Hydro, he left to complete his military service, and in 1978 he volunteered and served in South Lebanon under United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) as a way of contributing to world peace.
===Working life===
Upon his return to Norway, Wig continued at Norsk Hydro in Herøya and worked for many years as a skilled worker and trade union representative. He trained in quality management at Juran Institute (named after Joseph M. Juran. This made him a central figure in the development of a participatory improvement culture in Hydro companies and, subsequently, throughout Norway. In 1995, he wrote "Kvalitetsforbedring som Håndverk" (Quality Improvement as a Craft) and published in Norwegian and English by Hydro Media. In 1999 Berg Wig established TQM Center Norway and later co-founded Lean Forum Norway. 
In collaboration with the Bergen University College (website), he developed courses in Total Quality Management and Lean leadership. Students on these courses practiced strategic and operational development tasks within their own organizations. A unique feature of this practice-oriented program was that teaching and examination methods were tailored to the needs of union representatives and leaders. 
He has also been a significant advocate for adapting quality management and Lean principles to the Norwegian work culture.
Berg Wig has contributed to increasing the understanding and interest in Lean in Norway, inspiring many Norwegian businesses and municipalities to adopt Lean principles and tools. 
The publisher Gyldendal described him as "Norway's leading guru within Lean and improvement management."
In 2012, he established a training center for organizational learning in Piemonte, Italy.
As part of his work with LOS Norge, he developed Lean Speile (Lean Mirror), a tool to help organisations assess their Lean culture. He later developed a framework and a tool to help assess the strength of organisational learning. This framework was built on theories and knowledge of scholars such as W. Edwards Deming, Peter Senge, David Garvin, Amy Edmondson, Russell L. Ackoff, Derek Cabrera, Laura Cabrera. .
In an article in year 2021, he outlined a relationship between Deming's System of Profound Knowledge and Derek Cabrera's DSRP method of thinking..
In his book, (Systems Thinking with Obeya), he put forward the idea that combining Systems Thinking with Obeya offers organisations the conditions for faster and more effective organisational learning.
In August 2023, an announcement was made that a research project (Accelerated Learning in Organizations and Society (ALIOS)), lead by Bjarne Berg Wig has been approved as an R&D project under the Norwegian Research Council classification. The project was reported to aim to develop principles, methods, and tools for faster adaptive organizational learning.
==Bibliography==
In Norwegian
* Kvalitetsforbedring som håndverk (1995)
* Det uslåelige arbeidslaget (1999)
* Det er ledelse (2006)
* LEAN, Ledelse for lærende organisasjoner (2012)
* Lærende Organisasjoner (2018)
* Systemtenkning med Obeya (2023)
In English
* Quality Improvement as a Craft (1996)
* Systems Thinking with Obeya (2023)
==Articles==
*Systems thinking with Obeya (2023)
*Quality of the Soil (2021)
*A World of Systems Thinkers? (2021)
Category:1956 births
Category:Author
Category:Norwegian people
Category:People from Gjøvik