Repeatability

Closed-Loop Learning

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significant price premiums over competitors. Commenting on

this, its chairman and former CEO, Pius Baschera, said:

We have one distinct advantage over most competi-

tors—direct distribution. Let’s complete a very simple

calculation: if each one of our twelve thousand field

employees visits ten to fifteen customers a day, between

them they make well over one hundred fifty thousand

customer contacts. That’s every day. This is why we

know exactly what our customers want. Our research

and development doesn’t “invent” products in a

vacuum, in the hope that these appeal to the market. As

a rule, they translate the customer’s actual wishes—a

hard enough task in itself. Incidentally, this applies not

only ...