Data Management in an Operational Context: A study at Volvo Group Trucks Operations

Abstract: The present customer based and data driven world of business, together with the evolving social and technological trends continue to drive product complexity and product variety to a new height, one that is characterized by product customization. In the product realization pro-cess, the assembly floor remains the most vital part of the manufacturing process; to cope with the rigorous demands of product complexity and product variety, operators rely heavily on quality assembly instruction in manual assembly operations. Previous studies conducted at Volvo Group Trucks Operations (GTO) revealed the different working processes for creating assembly instructions, due to historical growth and acquisitions of other truck manufacturers. These different working processes are one of the main reasons for the reported quality devia-tion in assembly operations. This thesis therefore provides the current state analysis of data and information handling in the product realization process. Two research methods, direct observation and Semi-structured interview, were employed to investigate the availability and usage of data and information in the engineering phase and in the assembly phase. The study was conducted at manual assembly stations across three production plants within a case com-pany. The result indicates gaps and differences in opinion of how data is perceived, interpret-ed and utilized. Hence there are no standard approach on how data and information is man-aged in the manufacturing engineering IT systems and assembly information systems within all levels of the organization.