Enriching Production: Perspectives on Volvo's Uddevalla Plant as an Alternative to Lean Production.
1997; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 50; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/2525104
ISSN2162-271X
Autores Tópico(s)Quality and Supply Management
ResumoThe innovative, productive and humane Volvo Kalmar and Uddevalla plants, with various concepts of group work, were closed in 1994 and 1993 respectively.Times were changing.Unemployment was rising; unions were focussing more on job creation and employment than on quality of work.Globalization put pressure on homogenization of production processes.Volvo got a new top management, after Pehr G. Gyllenhammar who had conceived the new factories in cooperation with unions.The bestselling book 'Lean production' (Womack et al) articulated and reinforced the ideology that there is just one best way and that no viable alternatives exist.Today the Kalmar plant is rented as a warehouse, and for ICT production.In the Uddevalla plant Pininfarina with 800-900 employees produces a Volvo convertible using a product flow assembly system.In the other half of the plant Volvo Bus is welding space frames.But ideas of competitive and human-centred forms of industrial production are still alive and they are practiced in various sectors.The Volvo Kalmar and Uddevalla production concepts are still used, by academics and practitioners alike, as reference points and as reminders of the possibility of alternatives with quality in both work and products.The print editions of Enriching Production were quickly sold out.In January 2007, as a result of the centre-right government's decision to close Arbetslivsinstitutet/ Swedish National Institute for Working Life, we are organizing our archives and we found discs with the book.As there is still a demand we decided to prepare a digital edition, with no changes in the text, except this preface.Many thanks to Lena Karlsson for digital editing.Enriching Production was followed by a workshop and a special issue on
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