| La Lettre du GERPISA | no 113 (mai 1997) |
News from the Firms 1 - Kajsa Ellegård
Production volume: From June 1995 and until december 1996, a total number of 1.763 Volvo 850 cars have been built in the AutoNova final assembly shop for training and learning reasons. During this period the body and paint shops were under construction. When the complete plant now starts production, about 100-150 units of Volvo C70 in the try-out series have been produced by Autonova. Fifty cars from the first series of Volvo C70 are shipped by air to the US to be tested by American dealers and motor journalists. The respons have been positive from both groups. A new movie about The Saint is now featured by Paramount, and the modern Saint drives Volvo C70, just as the early Saint drove Volvo P 1800. About 15 Volvo C70 cars are specially produced for the release of the movie all around the world.
Number of employees: There are all in all about 450 people working in AutoNova (production) and in AutoNova Development (preproduction engineering). In AutoNova (production) there are about 400 employees related to the core buisness (body, paint and assembly, external materials handling, maintenance, production management and production engineering) and in addition about 20-30 individuals have purely administrative work tasks. All internal materials handling is integrated into the work tasks of the employees in the body, paint and assembly shops respectively. Sixty percent of the employees are men. About 50% of all employees worked in Volvo Uddevalla before. In the assembly plant the percentage is higher, about 70% of the employees worked in Volvo's Uddevalla plant before. This is of course a consequence of the fact that Volvo had an assembly plant, and that their skills and competence is important for the new assembly plant. Recruitment is still going on. More than 5.500 people have applied for job in AutoNova , among them most of the 800 people who worked in Volvo Uddevalla.
The number of employees employed today will not be enough to build 20.000 cars/year. A new way to cooperate with the local community has been tried for a part of the recruitment. People working in the public sector (hospitals, nursery schools etc) have been offered to try industrial work for a period of 6 weeks. The recruitment procedure here is exactly the same as the one used in ordinary recruitment. If you like it, the job is yours. There are about 300 applicants.
Organization: Work in production is organized in teams and each individual has greatly extended work content, responsibilities and authority. In the teams there are many work tasks that in a traditional car plant would have been performed by engineers only. There are three levels in the hierarchy: area manager (responsible for a number of teams), shop manager (one is responsible for the body shop, one for the paint shop and one for the assembly shop) and a plant manager (with the overall responsibility). The area manager is responsible for the learning and competence development and, thus, for discussion on personal development. The shop managers are responsible for the production planning and following up issues and the plant manager is responsible for the production as a whole.
Interest from Volvo: There are many study visits to AutoNova from managers in Volvo. They are interested in the flexible organization and the new agreements on wage and work time, and they want to know more about the production principles with extended work content and the vocational pride of the employees.
Engagement and involvement: There is a strong engagement among the employees in the development of the products and the production. They are deeply engaged in the result from the dealer and journalist test driving in the US. There will be a feed back directly from one of the individuals involved in the test drivings to all employees in AutoNova. Successful introduction on the market is the key to a long life for AutoNova with its reflective production system principles once developed in the planning of the Volvo Uddevalla plant.
(Last news: In Uddevalla, in the AutoNova group, there will be a new firm concerned with construction of buses. It will be called "OmniNova", and it is located to the AutoNova area.)
Index of number 113 ;
All the News from the Firms
in La Lettre du GERPISA ;
Available numbers ;
Information on this server.