Technology Convergence and System Divergence

Chapter 2, authored by Engström, explores alternatives to assembly line and assembly line work, providing a comprehensive overview of the Swedish line of development. The author and his colleagues share their insights and experiences accumulated over several decades of research and development work carried. While the author primarily focusses on the Volvo Uddevalla assembly plant’s case, they also mention other assembly plants and systems. For instance, the reason why the extensively long work cycle times proved feasible is explained, as is an example that is detailed further by treating the advanced material feeding technique, group work, layouts and matters such as experiences and insights, for example the industrial value of the cooperation between the author and his colleagues with Volvo personnel are expressed.

This chapter, co-authored by Nilsson and Engström, treats education and shop-floor learning principles from historical and scientific perspectives. Theories and practices were amalgamated during several decades of research and development work within the Swedish automotive industry long before the Volve Uddevalla projection process. This process intensified further during the Volvo Uddevalla projection process, which was mainly accomplished in a temporary workshop in Uddevalla (though, some parts of the prehistory are also cowered). This workforce was later moved to an entirely new assembly plant with material feeding by materials kits and small parallel workgroups, who single-handedly completed the assembly of automobiles with extensively long work cycle times—the advanced and unorthodox Volvo Uddevalla assembly plant. This projection process latter reached a full-scale manufacturing pace and required both authors’ involvement in various aspects.

This chapter, authored by Tamura, raises the following question: How do operators build a complete car in a stationary situation without a line system? After the 1970s, Sweden developed a production change based on the socio-technical systems (STS) perspective. The world’s attention was drawn to the Uddevalla plants for their no-conveyor system: the UPS. This chapter focuses on the cognitive aspects of UPS and compares it with TPS. Tamura shows that UPS is an epoch-defining production model that utilises cognitive capability as an indispensable factor in achieving high flexibility.

This chapter, co-authored by Medbo and Wänström, discusses the factory operators’ social and technical work situation. As the Uddevalla factory was seen as the future of sustainable manufacturing in the automotive industry, understanding the operators’ work situations and contents is crucial for defining the prerequisites for successful production. The discussion is based on interviews with operators in assembly workshops and reflect their perceptions and views. In the analysis, a cross-disciplinary framework is used, based on the self-determination theory, job design theory and socio-technical systems theory. The design with parallel product flows and extensive work cycles and contents was promising for high performance and improved working conditions. Further, the organisation of the production teams created good opportunities for operators to fulfil their basic psychological needs. However, this potential was not fully utilised, especially with respect to productivity. A leadership that focused on the design and needs of the production system would have significantly improved the workers’ well-being and performance.

This chapter, authored by Saruta, focuses on the human resource management and labour in the TPS, and reveals the reality of the ‘Hitozukuri’ (human resource development) underpinning Toyota’s ‘Monozukuri’ (manufacturing) process.

This chapter, authored by Nohara, consists of two parts, namely, the study of TPS itself and its influences over society. The former consists of three subparts, documenting the transformation of FPS into TPS, Toyota’s response to workers’ aversion to short-cycle line work and Toyota’s approach towards mitigating differences in conception and execution. The second part provides an overview of the influences of characteristics of TPS over society.

The author’s primary concern is that the excellence of TPS probably has substantial influence over the human way of thinking. In other words, as far as the production system itself is concerned, TPS or lean production is the crystallisation of modern rationality. However, modernity includes ambivalence. That is to say, if we focus on the production system itself, TPS is one of the best examples of modern rationality. But once we widen our perspective and go beyond the production system towards society, we can find the realisation of the danger embedded in modern rationality.

This chapter, authored by Asao, discusses assembly systems without conveyor equipment (the cell production systems), which have been introduced in Japanese electrical and precision equipment assembly workshops since the early 1990s, and identifies two main points. Firstly, the cell production system (CPS) has four basic characteristics compared with traditional production systems. Secondly, five social and technological conditions necessitated and enabled the conversion from traditional production systems to CPS. Where these five conditions or similar conditions exist, it is expected that conversion from traditional production systems to CPS will keep progressing.

This chapter, co-authored by Nilsson and Nohara, discusses a comparison of learning strategies among FPS, TPS and UPS.

This chapter, co-authored by Asao, Tamura and Fujita, analyses the division of labour structure of individual operators or workgroups in three different assembly systems: parallel production at the Volvo Cars Uddevalla plant in Sweden, the Autonomous Complete Process (ACP) at the Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan and the CPS at the Japanese electrical and precision equipment manufacturing company N. Two main findings are revealed. Firstly, the standard operations tended towards recovering functional cohesion or wholeness as the operators moved from traditional to ACP-implemented assembly lines and CPS or Uddevalla’s parallel production. Secondly, in systems where standard operations are executed over long cycles and one or a few operators assemble the whole product, the possibility of delegating nonstandard operations to individual operators or workgroups has been expanded. To realise this possibility, this chapter points out the importance of rethinking the belief that a thorough division of labour is the only way to increase efficiency.

This chapter, authored by Nohara, characterises the comparison between TPS and UPS as technical convergence and system divergence. According to the author, Toyota and Volvo faced the same problem—labour shortage. In terms of solving it, both organisations had the same work-focused orientation. Therefore, their technical resolution methods were similar or identical and their experimentations appear to technically converge. However, the organisations had different targets that were realised in the respective production systems as a whole. Toyota’s target was to realise more comprehensive work, meaning that work recovered the contextually meaningful connection among series of operations. Meanwhile, Volvo’s target was to realise integrated work—indicating a system divergence.

In the final chapter (Chapter 12), co-authored by Medbo and Nohara, a set of analytical results of the above chapters and future discussions are presented, along with a conclusion of the study’s findings.