Word: volvo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Gyllenhammar has skippered Volvo with the same assurance with which he pilots his 31-ft. sloop Amanda III. Almost immediately after taking over, he replaced a centralized management structure with four semiautonomous divisions, each of which is responsible for its own profits. He also expanded production of trucks, marine and industrial engines and other products to a point where they account for 43% of Volvo's sales. Pretax profits reached $90 million during the first half of this year, despite a 19% decline in U.S. sales of Volvo cars...
...Gyllenhammar appointed two union men as voting members of Volvo's board, a customary practice in some European nations but at that time still rare in Sweden. He also made changes at Volvo's big assembly plant near Göteborg, automating the heaviest jobs and establishing an internal placement agency to help people find more satisfying assignments. American workers will soon get a firsthand look at Gyllenhammar's style. Volvo has broken ground for a new assembly plant in Chesapeake, Va., the first automobile factory established in the U.S. by a foreign company since World...
...Henry Ford, patron saint of mass production, the new Volvo plant in Kalmar, Sweden, would seem curious indeed. It looks more like a giant repair shop than an auto factory. The working space is airy, uncluttered by stacks of spare parts. The plant is so quiet that workers can chat in normal tones, or hum along with the pop tunes playing on their cassette tape recorders. Troubleshooters on lightweight bicycles ensure a steady flow of spare parts. Sunlight plays against bright-colored walls through huge picture windows looking out on the landscape. But the most puzzling question in Ford...
...comparatively well-educated workers have shown for tedious, repetitive factory jobs. In the U.S. and other countries, that attitude is reflected in heavy absenteeism and high turnover among factory work forces, poor-quality production and occasional strikes by workers desperate to get away from the line for a while. Volvo's system at Kalmar is attracting worldwide attention as an imaginative effort to set up a factory that will keep workers interested while busy...
Instead of a clanking, high-speed conveyor line, the Kalmar plant uses 250 "carriers"-18-ft.-long computer-guided platforms that glide silently over the concrete floor. Each carrier delivers the frame for a single Volvo 264 to each of the plant's 25 work teams. The teams consist of 15 to 25 workers who are responsible for a certain aspect of assembly; one team, for example, will install the car's electrical system and another will work on the interior finish...