Academic literature on the topic 'Scania trucks'

In a world of fierce competition that is the reality for heavy truck manufacturers, it is important to optimize every step of production to the greatest extent. The Swedish truck manufacturer SCANIA early adopted such ideas and has put great efforts to implement a concept called lean production. As a part of the company’s strive for continuous improvement, all parts of the value adding chain shall be as efficient as possible.  Previously this work has been focused inside the SCANIA organization but as demands on production volume and profit margin increases, focus turns outside the factory premises. A bodywork is fitted as a last step in the completion of many trucks. This is done by external companies called bodybuilders, outside the control of the factory. In this thesis, the bodybuilder induced waste is addressed from a global perspective. The report is entirely based on interviews with people inside SCANIA, SCANIA’s Swedish business unit, bodybuilders in both Sweden and Poland and a Swedish employer’s organization. Through these interviews, the difficulties surrounding the subject have been mapped from different perspectives. As a complement to the interviews, a program that calculates the annual waste related to shortened chassis frames has been developed. The main waste inducing problem areas found in this thesis is: -        Poor communication between seller and bodybuilder before specifying and ordering the chassis. -        Poor communication between factory and bodybuilder regarding existing chassis preparations. -        A high degree of customer involvement in the bodybuilder process on the Swedish market. -        High price sensitivity on the Polish market makes chassis specified without preparations more attractive. -        Highly diverse customer demands on the Swedish market. -        Insufficient ordering tools to meet the customer demands of individually customized vehicles. -        Discrepancies between the global focus at factory and the local nature of the market on which the sellers exist. The costs related to shortened chassis frames alone is estimated to cost SCANIA 5 000 000 SEK annually in terms of reduced chassis frame waste and decreased costs for bound investments when chassis are standing at bodybuilders. In order to go from today’s annual production of 70 000 vehicles to the long-term goal of 150 000 vehicles/year, it will be crucial to reduce waste throughout the whole production chain. This will require better prepared vehicles from factory, better ordering software for the sellers and less rigid customer behaviour on certain markets. The increased communication between seller, bodybuilder and factory will be necessary and could be implemented through cooperation between selected bodybuilders and sellers in a preferred program.

70 % of the worlds most expensive wildfireshas occurred since year 2003. This is a clear example of that wildfires arean increasingly growing problem which demands new solutions. Some of the most prominent problems of fighting wildfires are the harsh terrainand limited accessibility, the lack of communication and difficulties in creating an overview off the scene and predict how the wildfire will develop. These problems are all factors which I have tried to focus on in my degree project, the Trition. By doing thoroughly research about wildfires and by gathering information and inspiration from other areas, such as the military, it was possible to see the problems of wildfires in a more problem solving perspective. Ideas and forms were generated through unrestrictive sketching and created sketch models.The Trition is a terrain fire truck that serves as a response vehicle, with exceptionally good off-road mobility and that always can be first at the scene. The Trition also serves as a command central which can organise the enormous operations that big fires demands. By having a mobile and multifunctional command central it is possible to always have the latest data about the scene and plan the wildfire fighting in the most efficient way.The Trition is equipped with a drone on its roof. The drone can take off and sweep the area, collecting data which gives the firefighters a good overview and that help to predict the wildfire, such as wind speed and the terrain incline. The drone also has an important preventing function. By regularly sweeping inhabitant areas, the drones infrared camera can detect wildfires earlyon and alert the Trition for an early intervention.

In this master thesis project carried out on Scania’s interaction design department in Södertälje an evaluation of the technology gaze interaction has been done. The aim was to see if the technology was suitable for implementation in a truck environment and what potential it had. The work started by doing a context analysis to get a deeper knowledge of the research done on within the area related to the subject. Following the context analysis a comprehensive need finding process was done. In this process, data from interviews, observations, ride along with truck drivers, benchmarking and more was analysed. The analysis of this was used to identify the user needs. Based on the user needs the concept development phase was conducted. The whole development phase was done in different stages and started off by an idea generation process. The work flow was made in small iterations with the idea to continuously improve the concepts. All concepts were evaluated in a concept scoring chart to see which of the concepts that best fulfilled the concept specifications. The concepts that best could highlight the techniques strengths and weaknesses were chosen and these are Head Up Display Interaction and Gaze Support System.. These concepts focused on the interaction part of the technique rather than a specific function. Test of the two concepts were conducted in a simulator to get data and see how they performed compared to today´s Scania trucks. The result overall was good and the test subjects were impressed with the systems. However there was no significance in most of the cases of driving except for some conditions where the concepts prove to be better than the systems used today. Gaze interaction is a technology that is suitable for a truck driving environment given that a few slight improvements are made. Implementation of the concepts have a good potential of reducing road accidents caused by human errors.

Course: Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, Degree of Master of Science in Business and Economics, Controller major, 15 credits - 2FE24E Institution: School of Business and Economics at Linnaeus University  Authors: Adam Johansson, Ebba Hansson, Sami Talah  Supervisor: Cristoffer Lokatt Examiner: Pia Nylinder Titel: How do production companies motivate their employees to achieve the organization's set goals and objectives? - A qualitative interview study on Scania & Volvo Trucks Background and problem: Given the significant role that employees have in today's society, it is essential how the employer motivates and directs their employees to make them work with the goals set by the organization. In the production industry, it is difficult to motivate employees because of their monotonous duties. The tasks are considered to be monotonous as they are classified as repetitive, boring and stressful. Gagne & Deci (2005) believe that different employees in different industries are motivated in different ways. The fact that two world-leading companies in the truck industry use different perspectives on how their employees should be motivated and guided to achieve set goals and objectives is therefore interesting to analyze. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how production companies control their employees with the help of motivation to achieve set goals and objectives. Further this study will analyze the differences in the management control of motivational work and the motives underlying the choice of the organization's management through motivation. Method: This study was conducted as a qualitative interview study of two cases companies. Through semi-structured interviews, two respondents participated. The selection of respondents is a convenience selection due to COVID-19, but the selection of the fall companies is target selected. As a result, the quality of the study has been ensured through the selection of respondents and the choice of theoretical sources. Conclusions: This study as a whole gives some idea of how Scania and Volvo Trucks guiding their employees through motivation to achieve the organization's goals and objectives. What we come to realize is that these two companies choose different approaches. Scania uses more "soft" values, while Volvo Trucks uses more "hard" values. A part of Volvo Trucks' work is to distribute monetary rewards, but also uses "soft" values in their motivational work. But not to the same extent as Scania does. This study also demonstrates that the cultural aspects of how an organization should try to motivate their employees to the goals and objectives have a greater impact than we anticipated. What the companies have in common is that they manage to take into account the individual needs of their employees from different perspectives.

The transport sector is currently facing challenges to reduce environmental impacts during the vehicle’s operation due to its reliance on fossil fuels. The introduction of new technologies such as alternative fuels or battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are therefore rapidly growing because they can significantly reduce the vehicle’s tailpipe emissions. There is however the concern that these could transfer environmental burdens to other life cycle phases such as production. Therefore, a development towards sustainable transport will require more than just the development of alternative fuels or EVs, but also a more sustainable production. Considering that 80% of the product related environmental impacts are determined during the design phase of a product, the significance of product design is studied. Scania offers the opportunity to customize trucks with a high level of detail through customized design, also called S-order design. Design engineers want to know if their customized solutions have the potential to reduce environmental impacts within the production of a truck. Therefore, the life cycle assessment (LCA) framework is used to know the environmental impacts of a truck designed with S- and A-order design and to compare them in order to determine if there is an environmental performance difference between these two designs. The results show that the production of a truck with a S-order design has on average 3% lower environmental impacts on all impact categories than when it’s produced with an A-order design. This is due to the S-order design’s great level of flexibility to consider small details of the truck’s functionality. Nevertheless, this design flexibility can lead to multiple configurations for one truck, thus meaning that the results will vary from product to product since the customer decides the specifications of the truck. The main conclusion is that the early implementation of adaptations through S-order design in heavy truck development at Scania can potentially reduce resource consumption and environmental impacts, and aid to sustainable production.<br>Transportsektorn står för närvarande inför utmaningar för att minska miljöpåverkan under fordonets drift på grund av dess beroende av fossila bränslen. Introduktionen av ny teknik som alternativa bränslen eller elektriska fordon (BEV) växer därför snabbt eftersom de avsevärt kan minska fordonets utsläpp från avgasröret. Det finns emellertid oro för att dessa skulle kunna överföra miljöbelastningar till andra livscykelfaser som exempelvis produktionen. Därför kommer en utveckling mot hållbara transporter att kräva mer än bara utveckling av alternativa bränslen eller eldrift, men också en mer hållbar produktion. Med tanke på att 80% av de produktrelaterade miljöeffekterna bestäms under en produkts designfas studeras därför produktens design. Scania erbjuder möjligheten att skräddarsy lastbilar med hög detaljnivå genom skräddarsydd design, även kallat S-orderdesign. Designingenjörer vill veta om deras skräddarsydda lösningar har potential att minska miljöpåverkan inom tillverkningen av en lastbil. En livscykelanalys (LCA) används därför för att känna till miljöpåverkan från en lastbil konstruerad med S- och A-orderdesign och för att jämföra dem för att avgöra om det finns en skillnad i miljöprestanda mellan dessa två konstruktioner. Resultaten visar att tillverkningen av en lastbil med S-orderdesign har i genomsnitt 3% lägre miljöpåverkan på alla kategorier av miljöpåverkan än en med A-orderdesign. Detta beror på S- orderdesignens stora flexibilitet för att ta hänsyn till små detaljer gällande lastbilens funktionalitet. Dock kan denna konstruktionsflexibilitet leda till flera konfigurationer för en lastbil, vilket innebär att resultaten kommer att variera från produkt till produkt eftersom kunden bestämmer lastbilens specifikationer. Huvudslutsatsen är att det tidiga genomförandet av anpassningar genom S- orderdesign vid utvecklingen av tunga lastbilar hos Scania potentiellt kan minska resursförbrukningen och miljöpåverkan och stöd till hållbar produktion.

Global sustainability awareness and governmental regulations are pushing the automotive industry into finding alternatives to carbon dioxide emitting products. Solutions utilizing electricity in the vehicle powertrain is overtaking market share from internal combustion engines (ICE). This tendency has spread into the heavy-duty truck segment which poses questions regarding the future of the ICE. An alternative, electric motors, powered with batteries, fuel cells of even ICE’s, is thought to become a core part of future mobility. To mitigate discontinuities during a shift from ICE to electric motors, a study of possible factors affecting such transition has been performed. The result indicates 14 main factors which are thought to have a definite role in a major technology paradigm shift. These factors are: Supplier relations, Material management, Material availability, Available space, Scalability, Product flexibility, Risk management, External resource utilization, Internal relations, Demand estimation, Management endorsement, Appropriate methodology, Employee engagement, and Competence renewal. A structure using ISM methodology is established highlighting the factors’ influencing relation to each other. Anchored in the theory regarding paradigmatic shifts within industry, a tendency of technological, managerial, and institutional influence on organizational change can be discerned where the institutional level poses as the fundamental dimension of derived quality. The factors are identified from a Scania specific case but are broad enough to apply to similar situations facing challenges of a technological paradigm shift.

Scania is one of the leading manufacturing companies of long-haulage trucks, buses as well as industrial and marine engines. Offering services is becoming increasingly important for Scania, as well as for any other truck OEM company, to stay competitive. Today Scania offers several services connected to the company’s products. The current service portfolio targeting the long-haulage truck is mainly focused on meeting the needs of the first owner of the vehicle. However, the truck goes through different phases during its lifecycle, operating under varying conditions in different businesses. With this in mind, the study aimed at answering the following research questions: RQ1 - What are the characteristics of the phases that a long-haulage truck faces during its lifecycle? RQ2 - How do these phases relate to the nature of the customers’ businesses with their associated challenges, demands and needs? RQ3 - Based on the results of RQ1 and RQ2, what service areas could a long-haulage truck OEM offer their customers? In order to answer RQ1 and RQ2, an internal mapping including interviews with experienced Scania employees, was conducted. This was followed by an external mapping, in which hypotheses generated from the internal mapping were tested through interviews with owners of used long-haulage trucks as well as distributors. Based on the internal and external mapping, development of service areas targeting the later owners of the long-haulage truck’s lifecycle was carried out, including brainstorming sessions and workshops. The result of the study showed that the long-haulage truck’s life is characterized by differences in utilization and not by distinctive owners groups, the phases in the truck’s lifecycle are consequently use phases. When describing the characteristics of the use phases, two parameters primarily define the life of the truck. Firstly, with the truck’s increasing age, the utilization of the truck goes from focusing on logistics to moving things from A to B. Secondly, with increased age, the emphasis on advanced technology shifts to basic technology in regards of the truck’s physical condition as well as the owner’s need and desire for technology. Advanced technology is related to a utilization focus on logistics while basic technology goes hand in hand with moving things from A to B. In addition, the further away in the lifecycle, the focus on delivery precision, need of the business having high use frequency of the used truck, the demand for technically advanced functions, need for vehicle reliability and tendency to turn to OEM for R&amp;M decreases. Furthermore, the further away in the lifecycle and from the starting point Europe, the driver’s level of loyalty towards the business, incentive to use technical devices in driver environment and focus on the driver’s working situation is reduced. Based on above description of the long-haulage truck’s life, a truck OEM company such as Scania can offer services related to R&amp;M, the transition that occurs when the truck is sold or bought, safety and security aspects and driver convenience. The order the services areas are given in is the order the areas are considered to have the most offering potential. Recommendations for future work involve development of the services, which currently are suggestions. To ensure further successful development, additional studies, including quantitative on-site examinations of for example users outside Europe, needs to be carried out.

The vast majority of trucks in the European Union are reliant on fossil fuels as their primary mode of propulsion. In efforts to decarbonise the truck transport sector manufacturers are developing electrified trucks. An electrification may serve to reduce the tailpipe emissions of trucks, but it introduces a new challenge to supply the cabin with energy. This energy is primarily used to maintain a comfortable cabin climate for the driver and passenger. In order to maximise the range of an electric truck the cabin energy requirement needs to be minimised. This thesis evaluates the current energy performance of a Scania S20H cabin through experimental testing as well as simulations using the simulation software GT-SUITE. Based on the results from the tests and the models, energy saving concepts were generated and their performance was evaluated. The experimental tests were performed on a truck in a climate chamber where the ambient temperatures, HVAC system fan speeds, air recirculation rate and inlet air temperatures were varied. The test data was used to build a one-dimensional simulation model in GT-ISE as well as a three-dimensional model in GT-TAITherm. The one-dimensional model was calibrated against 10 experimental tests and yielded an average relative error for the chosen temperature calibration parameters between 0.05% and 0.43%. The one-dimensional model showed that the largest energy loss was through air evacuation and air leakage, accounting for 70-90% of the input energy. The structural energy losses were primarily through the windshield and the side windows, accounting for 32% and 23% of the total structural losses respectively. Energy saving concepts in the form of low emissivity window glazing, double pane windows, xenon filled gas panel insulation and low levels of air recirculation were simulated. The best and most plausible combination of the aforementioned concepts yielded an average input energy decrease of 31.6%, air loss decrease of 32.9% and a structural loss decrease of 27.6% compared to the simulated base cases. The three-dimensional model was calibrated against one test case and yielded an average relative error of 0.15% for the chosen temperature calibration parameter. One energy saving concept in the form of double pane side windows in conjunction with low emissivity glazing on all windows was simulated. This concept had a slight impact in raising the average cabin air temperature and the interior surface temperatures of the windows. The surface temperature change resulted in a decrease of cold downdraught from the top roof window and the driver side window. In conclusion, the models work as intended providing a time efficient way of evaluating the energy performance of structural changes. In order to improve the performance, usefulness and accuracy of the models the initial values should be more exact. This can be achieved by standardised testing procedures as well as data collection with wind speed.

The vast majority of trucks in the European Union are reliant on fossil fuels as their primary mode of propulsion. In efforts to decarbonise the truck transport sector manufacturers are developing electrified trucks. An electrification may serve to reduce the tailpipe emissions of trucks, but it introduces a new challenge to supply the cabin with energy. This energy is primarily used to maintain a comfortable cabin climate for the driver and passenger. In order to maximise the range of an electric truck the cabin energy requirement needs to be minimised. This thesis evaluates the current energy performance of a Scania S20H cabin through experimental testing as well as simulations using the simulation software GT-SUITE. Based on the results from the tests and the models, energy saving concepts were generated and their performance was evaluated. The experimental tests were performed on a truck in a climate chamber where the ambient temperatures, HVAC system fan speeds, air recirculation rate and inlet air temperatures were varied. The test data was used to build a one-dimensional simulation model in GT-ISE as well as a three-dimensional model in GT-TAITherm. The one-dimensional model was calibrated against 10 experimental tests and yielded an average relative error for the chosen temperature calibration parameters between 0.05% and 0.43%. The one-dimensional model showed that the largest energy loss was through air evacuation and air leakage, accounting for 70-90% of the input energy. The structural energy losses were primarily through the windshield and the side windows, accounting for 32% and 23% of the total structural losses respectively. Energy saving concepts in the form of low emissivity window glazing, double pane windows, xenon filled gas panel insulation and low levels of air recirculation were simulated. The best and most plausible combination of the aforementioned concepts yielded an average input energy decrease of 31.6%, air loss decrease of 32.9% and a structural loss decrease of 27.6% compared to the simulated base cases. The three-dimensional model was calibrated against one test case and yielded an average relative error of 0.15% for the chosen temperature calibration parameter. One energy saving concept in the form of double pane side windows in conjunction with low emissivity glazing on all windows was simulated. This concept had a slight impact in raising the average cabin air temperature and the interior surface temperatures of the windows. The surface temperature change resulted in a decrease of cold downdraught from the top roof window and the driver side window. In conclusion, the models work as intended providing a time efficient way of evaluating the energy performance of structural changes. In order to improve the performance, usefulness and accuracy of the models the initial values should be more exact. This can be achieved by standardised testing procedures as well as data collection with wind speed.