We also took the opportunity to visit Scania in Södertälje. At the site they do the full assembly of trucks. Just to be able to see the building process and visually follow how part after part is assembled is remarkable. It is easy to understand when standing there, how the delivery precision from suppliers must be extremely important. I took the opportunity to think of this from a GKN perspective, since some of our parts we manufacture are released directly into the assembly of aircraft engines. To me this was a bit of an eye-opener.

Still, what made the strongest impact on me was how they raise and manage problems. Already in the visiting room there was a big poster visualizing the Scania way of the Lean-house. It is clearly a company which has matured in their Lean work. Despite the fact that the production of GKN in Trollhättan is very different from Scania’s, functional vs. flow oriented, the visit gave new perspective on how Lean can be implemented. I left with lots of inspiration and ideas!

The visit ended with a presentation and general talk between graduate trainees from the two companies. Surprisingly a lot of the program setup was similar such as internal internships and an abroad internship.

Thank you Scania for letting us visit!