F\uf6r\ue4ndring av industriell praxis till funktionella f\uf6rebilder

The publication (or this book) was written during a period of time that Arbetsvetenskapliga Kollegiet running in Gothenburg (a research project financed by the Swedish Work Environment Fund in Stockholm (“Arbetsmilj\uf6fonden AMFO” in the Swedish language), which were organized as a joint venture initiative between a number of selected department at Chalmers University of Technology and at Gothenburg University)

Avrapportering av projekt ”Dokumentation av Volvo Personvagnars slutmonteringsfabrik i Uddevalla”

This publication reports on some of a research foundation\u27s (Arbetsmilj\uf6fonden) financed parts of Engstr\uf6m’s and his colleagues\u27 (researchers a well as other individuals) participation in the design, development, starting-up and full-scale production phases of the Volvo Automobile assembly plant in Uddevalla. This particular initiative (for the publication now treated here) resulted on in the fact that all of the documents from this assembly plant was collected (thereafter sorted on site in order to\ua0eliminate redundancies), and\ua0finally\ua0were each and every binder of documents etc. sent to the\ua0basement at of Engstr\uf6m’s final experimental\ua0workshop located at Chalmers University of\ua0Technology (such workshops are nowadays utopian, see below). There these documents were harboured at this premise for several\ua0years until totally new building facilities were provided for a number of different departments. At this moment were rents accelerated (bewildering costs was claimed on individual scientists) (an experimental workshop proved to be utopian). Engstr\uf6m’s research group was therefore forced to let this documentation to be sent to external store rented outside of Chalmers. Moreover, this documentation included (in a similar manner but much better prepared from our side), all of the documents from the Volvo Kalmar assembly plant which was closed approximately a year after the Volvo Uddevalla assembly plant (see some of the other publications registered in Chalmers Public Library CPL). Later on (more than approximately two decades), was this totally unique documentation transferred to Volvo’s Historical Archive (organised under the Volvo Museum) who in all respects mistreated this material and also unfortunately neglected a written agreement (contract) with Chalmers and Engstr\uf6m. In fact, it was by no means a professional treatment of the material in question. In fact, they gradually proved to neglect it. as a part of a protracted process, i.e. this Volvo organisation dragged for years to do anything at all with it (they changed manager and proved to not be able to deal with these two documentations in any professional manner, among other things due to lack of space and must probably for other reasons as well). On the other hand, interest and help from Chalmers side were almost non-existing, at the very end of Engstr\uf6m’s employment were some rather lame efforts to carried out. Individuals at Chalmers were afraid to create conflicts Volvo by\ua0asserting the contract due to ongoing financing and the fact that Engstr\uf6m had to retire anyway. Consequently, were no help available from Chalmers side to claim the agreement with the previous manager of Volvo Museum etc.As a result, this material from the two unique/pioneering assembly plants was forever lost to the scientist, or lest severely mutilated (see comment below) (sadly, we never got time to gain any academic merits of this material, it just cost\ua0money drawn from Engstr\uf6m\u27s donation granted from Volvo Uddevalla assembly plant). And believe the author here, it was an enormous (almost frightening) amount of binders, books etc. each of them scrupulous registered by Engstr\uf6m and his research colleagues as well as by local Volvo personnel that also kindly helped us out. Note, two written agreement with the top manager of each of these two assembly plants were both predating the contract with the Volvo archive by decades. Among other things, the material was partly used once again by local Volvo personnel than the Autonova plant later was constructed, i.e. some years after the closing down, i.e. the rebirth of the Volvo Uddevalla plant. However, to be frank, here, some of the material was just thrown in pallets at the very end, due to time restraints during our documentation processes. But generally speaking, were most of the material fully organised and saved in\ua0bookshelves at the basement of our final experimental workshop at Chalmers (and each binder etc, was assigned a sequence number that corresponded to our register sequence number, denotation, finding-place etc. (in accordance with the written agreements with the two top managers). It was in many respects a bewildering work carried out during several years (e.g. it was not easy for us to figure out exactly how) besides during the period of closing down were not Volvo personnel keen to let the central Volvo organisation get hold of anything (no other would probably have managed to carry through such documentation for a number of different reasons).A comment and important: The documentation work from our side was organised in accordance with the process and organisation of each of the two assembly plants. Thus, was it not following the Swedish Archive Standard usually supported by rather unmanageable PC-based systems (which Volvo’s Historical Archive practised). This archive standard would, in fact, have fragmented et the two documentations, and thereby not enhanced a deeper understanding of each assembly plant (such standards are used for saving of single/individual documents or series thereof) (interrelation between binders and documents are thereby entirely lost). This fact was clear to us and also considered by the earlier manager at the Volvo archive and thus dealt with in the agreement between Chalmers and the historical archive. Among other things was Engstr\uf6m from the beginning supposed to help Volvo out by means of packing up the material. However, this was not considered by the new manager (who, as said before, neglected the registering and work carried out by Engstr\uf6m\u27s research group)

Some Socio-Technological Aspects on Assembly System Designs in Japan and Sweden. A theoretical analysis

This completed and scrutinised article (or preprint not yet finished to due to the author’s retirement) is based on a more the thirty years cooperation with scientists located in Japan (featuring various Japanese financing, joint-venture seminars and other scientific initiatives like co-authoring, research tours in Japan and Sweden visiting various shop-floor operations, etc. But, the article is also bringing forward specific knowledge from the author’s earlier experiences regarding the development of alternatives to assembly line (initiated in 1975), as have been practised by one of his tutors gained before his doctor\u27s degree at the Saab Scania plant in Trollh\ue4ttan (initiated in 1970). This article has (for a decade) been completed and sent to our Japanese\ua0research colleagues\ua0as a chapter of a common\ua0book project (an anthology), which\ua0so far has not been fully completed due to several\ua0different reasons.This article is illuminating the (from the author’s perspective) recent development of so-called lean production (this approach was not existing during the 1970s and 1980s, at least not as the explicit theoretical frame of reference that is at hand nowadays). This with regard to the assembly work as were and partly still are at hand on the Japanese assembly lines. That is, considering the knowledge and experiences briefly hinted being at hand just above (the scientific context described), are the author in this article carrying out a sort of theoretical analyze of group work in the two countries. Thereby it becomes possible to compare, what may here be denoted as, a the most refined Japanese assembly lines (as was and is practiced by e.g. Toyota) with the most advanced unorthodox Swedish alternatives to assembly work (as was practiced earlier by the autonomous workgroups at Saab Scania in their body shop, and later on proved to also be successful in the nowadays defunct Volvo Uddevalla plant more than twenty-five years later). This means that serial and parallel product flows assembly system designs, with very short respectively extensively long work cycle times, are analyzed.Exploiting the sociotechnical theory, which was applied in e.g. the body shop case, on the Japanese counterpart proves that the two different assembly system designs had certain (important) characteristic (differences and resemblances). These characteristics, in turn, inflicts the efficiency, flexibility and work as well as work condition. Such comparisons are, according to the author’s insight, inventible necessary to grasp for any analyst, then he or she are discussing assembly work in any type of assembly system design (Note, not all plants are not alike. Furthermore, the theoretical frames of references have to be brought forward and also kept constant in order to conduct far more in-depth analyses)

System och komponenter i en lastvagn

Consumer report for the company in question (the Volvo Automobile Company) which was financed by the company and partly also by a research foundation. It is a matter of a work that in this particular case were carried out during nine years in a number of experimental workshops located outside the Chalmers University of Technology. This report has been\ua0validated\ua0by\ua0Volvo expertise at the Volo Torslanda plant (the content in this report represent extensive\ua0work from the author\u27s side).These workshops were financed by the Volvo Automobile and Truck companies. This achievement, as the final contribution to the Swedish automotive industry after having already treated this research field/problem area for more than two decades before this particular period if time (involving several junior and senior research competencies, as well as industrial and governmental foundings).Specifically, this publication explains in one particular perspective how the authors dealt with the product architecture and product variation of the automotive products disassembled, which proved to necessary to be carried out in one of the experimental workshops (FOOTNOTE 1). Besides of making the product architecture and product variation understandable for the parties involved (operators as well as practitioners), was the functions of the automotive products just as important to grasp. Especially so with regard to if such (product) functions was something that was or gradually become evident during the assembly work, or alternatively if this was impossible to understand. In the latter case, such as chassis settings (that eventually to some extent would be possible to grasp), or many marketed-oriented codes (that are extremely difficult to decode) (several complete automobiles and one heavy truck chassis were disassembled combined with having product data accessible in form of paper print-outs as well as by appropriate computer connections to the two Volvo companies etc. as well as other publication that dealt with automotive matters from the Volvo or from other sources).FOOTNOTE 1: See a conference contribution from 1992 that also is registered and available as o PDF-document at Chalmers Public Library (CPL) (a self-developed method found out together with a junior research competency from the School of Architecture at Chalmers)