Word: volvo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...been racing through the West since it was introduced about two years ago. In California, Mazda is already the fourth-biggest-selling import, ahead of Fiat and Volvo. U.S. sales have grown from almost nothing in 1970 to an estimated 60,000 this year, and are expected by company officers to at least double next year. Mazda officials expect the operation to reach optimum size in 1975, with 655 dealers selling 300,000 cars annually. That could well put Mazda among the top five car sellers, about even with American Motors...
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...
...Pehr Gustaf Gyllenhammar is president and chief executive of Sweden's Volvo, the automobile, aircraft and heavy-equipment manufacturer that is the largest industrial combine in Scandinavia (revenues last year: $1.2 billion). He is also the author of a book about future economic and social problems, Toward the Turn of the Century, Somehow. "My main job is structuring a corporate philosophy that will take us into the next century," he says...
Lately, Gyllenhammar has been concentrating on ways to help his workers enjoy their jobs. Since becoming chief executive 16 months ago, he has overseen $30 million in improvements in Volvo plants-adding saunas, Ping Pong and coffee-break rooms, swimming pools and libraries. He is investing another $50 million in two plants scheduled for completion in 1974, in which "work teams" of 20 will replace much of the assembly lines. Instead of each worker performing a single, repetitive operation, he or she will work as part of a group that will be responsible for assembling large components and subassemblies, like...
Clearly Gyllenhammar is no run-of-the-line auto magnate. He came to Volvo without any experience in manufacturing of any kind. He studied at both the University of Lund and London University, spent five months in 1960 with a law firm in Manhattan, then joined a small Swedish insurance company. He later followed his father as managing director of Skandia, Sweden's largest insurer. He is married to the daughter of the former Volvo chief executive, but no one in the company doubts that Gyllenhammar would have made it to the top without his family ties. Generally acknowledged...