Knowledge of materials
Structuring Assembly Inspection Adjustment/inspec- tion (action)
Questions such as: Which components are to be found in the assembly zone? How are the compo-
nents fixed?
Are the components the correct ones? What quality demand are there on this com- ponent?
Questions such as: In which function are the components inclu- ded?
How is this information about the assembly obtained through docu- ments?
What tools are to be used?
What demands on precision are there for
assembly/fit?
How should the work pattern look as regards assembly work?
Questions such as: How should the work patterns look as regards relations between individual/-s - tools, - components, - car body?
How can variation be achieved in movements to prevent injury to people and damage to materials and tools and attain desired quality and work intensity? Performing assembly tasks.
How should worker- inspection be carried out during and after he work process?
Questions such as:
How should the com- pleted assembly look when it has been cor- rectly carried out? What instruments are used to determine whether the work has been correctly carried out?
What routines are to be followed if defects are detected?
How is the completed inspection documen- ted?
Questions such as: How are the various ty-
pes of defect rectified? How are the rectified
defects and desired quality attainment checked?
How are the rectifica- tions and new inspec- tion documented? How are results repor- ted, and to whom, to prevent recurrence of defects? F ig u r e 1 . M od el o f th e d iffe ren t p ha ses in th e e xp an de d a sse m bly w ork So urc e : N ils so n 1 99 4:c , p . 4 0
difficult is the use of mechanistic descriptions not related to the ways human beings create orientation, groupings, context-relations, and survey the work. All this can be looked at as ‘tools’ human beings use to master complexity and achieve a professional identity.
The objective is to create descriptions which facilitate for human beings to work by means of a natural mental approach, perceiving components as meaningful wholes from the viewpoint of assembly and the workers’ own apprehensions and/or experiences. This was the challenge that was taken on by researchers from two scientific disciplines, engineering and vocational learning, and gradually also with active contributions from workers at the Volvo Uddevalla plant with support from the management. The way we worked together was very successful and made it possible to create new ways of handling materials from ‘input’ to the completed car. Our co-operation also created new ways of describing the assembly and new guidelines for the assembly work itself.
In this context it is important to remember that when the Volvo Uddevalla plant was set up nobody had any knowledge of how to organize the flow of materials so as to suit an assembly process in which the car (body) remained in the same position (the work place) throughout the assembly process.
The way that was chosen was to group the materials according to assem-
bly function relationships, meaning that components belonging together in relation to assembly were arranged into groups by their characteristics, such as size, weight, shape, colour, and fragility. The components belong-
ing to one assembly functional group (‘family’) were also related to a main assembly functional group (‘kin’). This made it possible to view the cars as they passed along the assembly process from the material grouping to the finished assembled car. In this way the process could be viewed as an organic process instead of as a mechanistic addition of parts.
Descriptions which take into account the natural variations in colour, shape, size, fragility and relate them to the components’ names, ‘families’, and ‘kin’, as well as to surveyable patterns and contexts, vitalize the men-
tal, emotional and physical life of the assembly workers. The mechanistic, descriptive, primarily numerical orientation which dominates car assembly work limits the opportunities to enhance the competence of the workers and is an impediment for the development of professional learning. In this context it is also important to realize that the mechanistic description has other purposes than the organic, holistic description.
The mechanistic description is organized so as to view the product from within the existing work organisation. It is also possible to apply it from a sales perspective. With such a perspective the final result, the car, can be viewed as the total sum of all component parts and the ‘whole’ is reduced to a numerical code.
But from the workers’ point of view the mechanistic description is impos-
sible to work with. When one works in long cycles of 1.5 hours or more and one is developing a professional identity, the work content is large and entails correspondingly many responsibilities. Furthermore it is necessary to be able to survey the total work and to obtain support in terms of a de-
scription of the context in the space and time orientation.
It is also necessary to have access to descriptions that make it possible to obtain information on different precision levels. This last point is extremely important both during the learning process and as a reference in the long term in order to support quality and productivity.
The main point here is that the mechanistic descriptions had too limited applications. But the organic and holistic descriptions have the possibility of being used both as a tool for assembly work, materials handling, construc-
tion, and for sales; in short, a multidimensional usefulness.
Without grouping materials in relation to the car it would not have been possible to create an alternative to line assembly or to create parallellized workplaces. The materials were now related to ‘the body’. The body remains stationary during the assembly work. This technical innovation was made possible thanks to the new description. All this work was carried out by Tomas Engström and co-workers. Gradually the system was adjusted by the experiences of the Volvo Uddevalla plant with assistance from the workers and technicians at the plant. A lot of the new description was naturally used in the integrated learning and development processes at the plant.