Word: saab
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Boredom on the job. Blue-collar blues. By any name, the problems of low morale and numbing monotony surrounding production-line work have been of considerable concern in U.S. industry. One alternative often cited by various work reformers is the team-assembly concept pioneered by the Swedish automakers Saab and Volvo, according to which workers in small groups perform rotating tasks rather than installing the same widget on a fast-moving, impersonal line. American sociologists and union and management officials regularly return from tours of such plants favorably impressed. But recently a group of six Detroit engine-plant employees tried...
...Americans, all employees of General Motors, Ford or Chrysler, ranged in age from 21 to 53 and in experience from eight months to 21 years on Detroit assembly lines. They spent four weeks at a Saab engine plant in Sodertälje, Sweden, under a Cornell University project funded by the Ford Foundation. According to a report completed last week by Robert Goldmann, a Ford Foundation program officer who accompanied the group, the six generally found the physical working environment at Saab better than at home. More work space per person and omnipresent safety officials made the plant less hazardous...
...Sweden and Switzerland, to avoid jeopardizing their neutrality, ban arms sales to nations engaged in war or to areas "ridden by tension." Nonetheless, together they export about $75 million in arms annually. The Swedes specialize in sophisticated electronic equipment and fighter planes; Saab's Draken is flown by the Danish and Finnish air forces, and the firm hopes to find NATO customers for its new Mach 2 Viggen. Switzerland's specialties are antiaircraft weapons, which it has sold in quantities to West Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands...
Pressures and Intrigue. Initially, five planes were competing for the consortium's order. They were SEPECAT's (a British-French joint company) Jaguar, Saab-Scania's Viggen from Sweden, France's Mirage F1/M53 made by Dassault-Brequet, and two U.S. products: General Dynamics' single-engine YF-16 and Northrop's twin-engine YF-17, nicknamed the Cobra...
Break up the assembly line. A potentially revolutionary attempt at change is under way in the Swedish auto industry. Volvo and Saab are taking a number of operations off the assembly line. Some brakes and other sub-assemblies are put together by teams of workers; each performs several operations instead of a single repetitive task. In the U.S., Chrysler has used the work team to set up a conventional engine-assembly line; two foremen were given complete freedom to design the line, hand-pick team members and use whatever tools and equipment they wanted...