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Pehr Gyllenhammar, president of Volvo some thirty years ago, tried to find new ways to increase the productivity. He got the idea that he would build the technical environment in the factory with the workers as the starting point and not the other way around, as was the rule.

Assembly lines were the common way to build cars ever since Henry Ford. Volvo had developed the practice meticulously and every part of the work was optimized. Time was measured in seconds. The assembler did his work monotonously all day long and he was really seen as an extension of the hardware, the technical environment. The factory was organized like clockwork, planned in utmost detail. The problem was that productivity did not increase as expected as each part was optimized. The human side was forgotten and this resulted in people getting sick and staff turnover was great.

Pehr started to experiment with a new type of factory. He tried to do a paradigm shift. That was not an easy thing and many around him protested; Cars have been assembled this way for seventy years. In the new factory, the assemblers worked in teams and built sections of the car. They were able to control and plan their work and organize themselves. They were involved in decisions and quality control. The advantages of the small engineering workshop were rediscovered. Even the architecture of the factory was different. This factory in Kalmar eventually had the highest productivity of all factories for Volvo cars and visitors from all over the world came to see what was going on.

Interesting, isn’t it; people working in small teams, given the freedom to organize, to decide and take responsibility. Not an easy task to achieve, but the way to go in these days. The result is commitment and creativity and the gain is greater than if you control every part in detail. You cannot take apart a process and optimize every part in isolation. You have to consider the whole system and most of all you have to consider the human aspect. During the industrial revolution the machines ruled, consuming both man and environment in the long run. We must move on and learn from history. We must have a sustainable view of man.