Last week, we made a trip to Zurich, Switzerland for client work and after finishing a day early made a side trip to Stuttgart, Germany to tour the Porsche factory. Our friends at Porsche North Houston suggested we make the trip and showed us how to set it up. The trip got us thinking about our work in compliance.

Stuttgart is where Porsche builds its fabled 911 model car. There are 20 different versions of the car. The factory tour is a testament to Porsche's quality standards. We watched as 911 body shells painted in guards red, Miami blue, racing yellow, carrera white, jet black, and chalk danced along the assembly line while nimble Porsche technicians carefully attached parts to the cars. Because each 911 is different (potentially a different dashboard leather, instrument dials, interior options, engine and braking components), each part is barcoded to a particular car. Little robots move the parts to different stations where the technicians meticulously attach them to whichever car those parts belong to. Santa likely uses the Porsche factory as his benchmark. They also make the entry-level Boxter model on the same line, making the work even more complicated. At the end of the tour, a stack of merchandise at the gift shop reminds you that Porsche has won the world's greatest endurance race in Le Mans (set to begin later this month) 18 times. After the tour, the wins made perfect sense.

We were in Europe for compliance work. And as we drove back to Zurich on the Autobahn (as fast as our Fiat rental car would take us), we were reminded of the importance of defined processes and monitoring in effective compliance programs. We also learned that “ausfahrt” means exit, but that's a different column.