Developments in Assembly System Design: The Volvo Experience

Book chapter, 1999

This chapter focuses on experiences concerning the development of assembly systems within the Volvo Corporation. It provides research and development work within the Swedish automotive industry. The chapter considers a specific trajectory concerning assembly system design in the Swedish automobile industry, generalising the Volvo Kalmar and Volvo Uddevalla experiences. During 1988–1990, the managers at Volvo were planning the manufacturing of the new 800 model at the main Volvo Torslanda plant, as well as looking for a total redesign of the plant. The average product quality in the Uddevalla plant was high–in fact better than in Volvo's line assembly plants–but the product quality varied considerably. Productivity and flexibility proved to be superior to traditional serialassembly systems. Two ways of decreasing the time losses are to introduce parallel flow assembly systems–that is assembly systems consisting of many, short, unpaced flows–or to introduce buffers between work-stations.