Word: saab
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...some areas Volvo and Saab-Scania are using a team-production method, in which auto and truck components are assembled by semi-autonomous groups of four to seven workers each. At times they can decide in what order to tackle their tasks and even who their foreman will be. In another method, the men move along the line with the cars performing each successive assembly operation. The automakers are also rotating some assembly-line workers to different jobs. An employee may attach seat headrests one day, bore holes in the seat framework the next, connect back supports and lift seat...
...with the first results of their experiments. They report improved production quality and lower absenteeism. The workers no longer suffer from the muscular aches that came from performing the same operation at the same speed day after day, and executives have been encouraged enough to plan larger-scale tests. Saab this month opened in Södertälje an engine plant that contains only a short conventional assembly line; most of the assembly work will be completed by seven teams. Volvo officials are studying alternatives to the present assembly line in an auto plant scheduled to open in Kalmar...
Changing Roles. As wage costs balloon, a growing list of companies in Western Europe and Japan are seeking similar savings-sometimes next door, sometimes at the other end of the world. Sweden's Saab has just completed a plant in Uusikaupunkt, an undeveloped area of Finland, to roll out 15,000 cars a year, about one-third of which will be sent back to Sweden; the Finnish workers get about half the pay that Saab's Swedish employees do. West Germany's Daimler-Benz has invested $6.6 million in a Yugoslav truck and bus plant and supplies...