Volvo managers get the chance to build trucks

Recently, about ten members of the management from Volvo Truck, 3P (Volvo’s Product Planning, Purchasing and Product Development Business Unit) and Powertrain (Volvo’s supplier of engines, transmissions and drive axles) came into Volvo’s Tuve factory in Gothenburg, Sweden, climbed into overalls and started to build trucks, under the watchful guidance of experienced fitters.

The idea of allowing managers to build trucks came from Göran Levin and Dieter Nilsson, who work with product changes within Global Manufacturing (GM) and European Manufacturing (EM) respectively.

“We realised how important it was for the management to do this,” explains Göran Levin. “Modern trucks are so complex when it comes to wiring and pipework that it is impossible to describe the requirements verbally in a way that people will understand – it’s something they simply have to have hands-on experience of to understand properly. We constantly come back to an old proverb: ‘I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand’.”

One underlying aim is to create a shared vision for the product and the way trucks should be produced and engineered in the future when trucks will be assembled from a variety of ‘modules’.

There was so much interest from the executive management group that the truck-building sessions were immediately over-subscribed. “We are arranging another two such days during this autumn so that as many people as possible can participate,” adds Göran.

“It feels good,” he adds, “especially now when we can see how successful everyone feels it is, fitters and managers alike. We quite simply have a couple of extremely enjoyable and useful days at the factory, and we’re exceptionally well taken care of by all the expert fitters.”

One of the people who immediately jumped at the opportunity to build trucks was Staffan Jufors, President of Volvo Trucks. He is very pleased with the time he spent at the Tuve factory and said,
“It is immensely important that those of us who take decisions also understand the production process and the conditions under which the work is done. I’m glad that so many people from the management and from 3P have taken this opportunity.”


“There’s a really good atmosphere here,” he added. “I’m impressed both by the factory as a workplace and by the expertise of the fitters. I already knew that there is a lot of wiring and pipework involved, but it is far more complex and comprehensive than I had imagined.”

In the long run Staffan believes that these sessions can contribute to decisions on ways of simplifying the product even more, of streamlining without compromising on flexibility.

Leif Hultman, director of GM, also participated in the truck-building programme. He sees it as a way of linking together understanding and insight into how the product can be flexible and of high quality, at the same time as it needs to be production-friendly and support a good process. He said, “By doing the job themselves, people in the management group can gain added insight and the opportunity for objective reflection. We want to modularise the product and find established borders between various functions in a truck so that the interfaces between the various modules are repeatable.

Leif feels it is important that the group involved in trial assembly at the factory has a cross-functional background. “This business of modularisation affects everyone – engineering, purchasing and aftermarket,” he says. “I see it more as a corporate strategic issue than as an isolated production issue.”

Torbjörn Holmström, director of Volvo 3P, and Ricard Fritz, manager of Strategic Planning at Volvo Trucks, were also involved in building trucks.


“We both have some experience of assembly and truck workshops, so it did not come as a surprise to us that assembly is complicated,” says Torbjörn Holmström. “But this experience has opened our eyes to the need to work harder on the assembly-friendliness of our components. It has given us practical experience of something that we knew in theory.”

At a time when trucks are becoming increasingly complex, both because of customer demands and as a result of tougher legislation, they feel it is important to handle production in a smooth way.

“If we do not work in an intelligent way and with easily assembled modules, we will not succeed in handling the increasing complexity,” says Ricard Fritz.

All are convinced that initiatives such as encouraging managers to take a share in actual production will make co-operation easier in the future. “We are inspired by the immense know-how of the personnel here at the factory,” emphasises Ricard Fritz. “It’s important to reap as much benefit from all the expertise that there is within the company.”