Volvo Cars

ORGANIZATION TECHNOLOGY

Businesses and organizations are continuously taking advantage of the new innovations in technology to improve the productivity and efficiency of the organizations. In modern era, technology’s influence reaches beyond improving relations within an organization in order to enhance an organization’s ability to service its customers. But even more than that technology is having a major influence in shaping the organization itself. This present work focuses on the importance of Organizational Technology on the performance and productivity of Volvo cars and the ways in which it has affected the day to day activities in the organization with the technological upgradation.

With the ever happening technological improvements, organizations are readily leading towards the digital factory which is essentially a combination of several subcomponents like CAD, CAM, Manufacturing Process Management, Product Life Cycle Management etc. The digital factory serves the ultimate purpose of improving the quality and customer services.

Technology advancement has paved way for mass Customization, which refers to using a mass production technology to quickly and cost-effectively assembling the products that are uniquely designed to fit to the needs of the individual customer.

Volvo Cars has customized the products for various market segments as per the needs of the customer. In a sense that the company has high product flexibility and supplies different products to cater to the demands of the various market segments in which it operates. Volvo offers the option to individualize many cars like S80, V70, XC90, S60 Cross Country, V40 and many more.  This customized production is done with higher batch size (output per cycle) as they use equipment which are technologically advanced.

The technological advancement has also shown a major effect on the structural aspects of Volvo like Span of Control and Specializations. There are now lesser number of people working on a particular work compared to earlier numbers, which in turn will lead to narrowing down of the span of control and will help in increasing the efficiency of the company.

Core Organization manufacturing Technology:

Volvo Cars credits its leading position in the automobile sector to its strong focus on the core manufacturing technologies and innovations. This focus has motivated the company to set up some world-class manufacturing units with state-of-the-art technological innovations. Each and every single stage of the product evolution-design, development, manufacturing, assembly and quality control, is carried out precisely by the organization. Some the major innovations done by Volvo cars include three point safety belt, side impact protection system, adaptive cruise control, whiplash protection system etc.

Large batch and mass production:

Volvo opts for large batch and mass production process for the production of its cars. Large batch production is a manufacturing process characterized by long production runs of standardizes parts. Output often goes into inventory from which orders are filled because customers do not have special needs. Volvo right now has the capacity to produce 466,000 vehicles annually.

Lean Manufacturing:

Volvo cars began the implementation of lean manufacturing technology into its production process way back in 1996, and changing behavior at the manufacturing units was one of the biggest challenges that the auto company ever faced. This concept goes all the way from designing and product development to the manufacturing and the supply base. Major focus is to reduce the manufacturing costs as much as possible.  It's about eliminating the waste, because no matter, it all comes down to the customers who are always looking for the best value. Because of the lean manufacturing technology, quality has gotten better, cost has gotten better, and customer satisfaction has improved.