Gustaf Larson wrote “Cars are driven by people. The guiding principle behind everything we make, therefore, is and must remain safety.” When my father-in-law succeeded Assar Gabrielsson as Volvo’s CEO, he elevated the concept of safety as a brand asset—something that differentiated it from every other automobile maker. I have great respect for my predecessors, particularly my father-in-law, who was a great supporter of mine. I made many mistakes, but he never once told me he regretted picking me to succeed him, and I’m always touched when I think about that. But in order to keep Volvo evolving, I knew there must always be change, even when the current status quo was profitable. I believed we could take the brand asset of safety farther—by, among other things, extending the reflection of our consumer’s values to our factory workers, by placing an emphasis on worker safety and well-being as well as on environmental issues. And I had some very specific ideas about the product development of cars, as well.
These ideas became the genesis of the Volvo 240 series, successor of the 140 and of the wildly popular Amazon model. The Volvo 240 would not be substantially changed in shape, but in technology it was totally different. Beginning from the base of a concept car known as VESC, the Volvo Experimental Safety Car, the 240 was distinguished from its predecessor with the addition of the newest B21 engine, specially designed struts and rack and pinion steering, large front and rear crumple zones, and oversize aluminum bumpers. The solidity and resilience of its chassis was extraordinary, and the 240 became the most robust passenger car on the market. Of course, safety remained the single top priority in every design decision, and it was evident that the 240 was the pinnacle of what could be achieved when the US used it to establish required safety standards for all American-made cars. I was able to say with full confidence at a ceremony celebrating the 240 that we had “…the world’s safest car, one of the most worthwhile cars to buy, and a car that is already living legend and will be even more of one in the years to come.”
Another avenue of change that I pursued was the relationship of our industry to the environment. In the early 1970s, the awareness of environmentalism was only beginning to rise, and in 1972, the very first global environmental convocation—the United Nations Environmental Conference—was organized to take place in Stockholm. I gave a keynote speech at that conference, and Volvo’s website today still bears a line from it: “We are part of the problem—but we are also a part of the solution.” It was a very deliberate choice of words on my part. These were very early days for environmentalism—it was just a few years after the formation of the Club of Rome—and it was not a popular subject in industry. I felt it was very important to avoid any ambivalent statements that could be construed as a denial that Volvo was a contributor to pollution and processes that were unfriendly to the environment. I wasn’t going to claim that we were different, that we were the good ones. Instead, I admitted that we were bad too, and that needed to change. Why should it be so unheard of to admit the undeniable and take accountability for it?
Another new direction for Volvo was our participation in the development and production of space flight technology. In 1975, the European Space Agency was formed, a cooperative venture of twenty-two member-states. Volvo produced a component of the first Ariane rocket, a series of launchable spacecraft that were a collaborative project of Western Europe. I was not in attendance at the liftoff, as I was at a meeting with President Mitterrand and Chancellor Schmidt to present the project and its development to journalists in Paris. But I vividly remember seeing the liftoff on television, and watching the rocket rise from the launchpad into the sky. It was a very exciting moment.
One of the primary arenas for making the socially and humanistic oriented changes I prioritized was Volvo’s assembly plants, beginning with the Kalmar factory, established in 1974, and later with the Uddevalla plant. The goal was to design plants around the supposition that employees should be able to find meaning and satisfaction in their work, and to work in a healthful and pleasing environment while neglecting neither efficiency nor economic results. As Åke Sandberg put it in Enriching Production, the project was “innovative, productive, and humane…with various concepts of group work.” In developing the design and concepts, I worked with Volvo management and engineers and with the local and national unions to have an unfiltered source of information about what would truly benefit the workers.
In the Kalmar plant, we created a work-batch system to move away from the single-repetitive task assembly line system. Groups of workers were formed into teams, and each team was responsible for the collective assembly of one of the car’s systems. In a 1987 article in the New York Times, Steve Lohr cited the positive effect of the Kalmar plant on Volvo’s rising productivity and quality, and of the benefits of a work-batch team approach over an assembly line approach, writing, “Because each worker typically performs a series of tasks, the ‘cycle times’—or the period the worker has to complete his assignment—are often several minutes instead of the several seconds common on the assembly line. In addition, the workers in a team are taught to do several jobs, not only to escape monotony but also to fill in for sick or vacationing workers.”
Kalmar was the breakthrough I had hoped it would be. It became a workplace in which human-centered designs and concepts created improved jobs, which led to improved worker well-being and productivity. In conceiving the next plant, Uddevalla, the basic Kalmar concept remained, but was refined to be a bit more radical and sophisticated. The assembly line production system was dispensed with altogether at Uddevalla in favor of a fixed-site car assembly system in which multiple teams of skilled laborers worked in cooperation to collectively assemble entire vehicles. Åke Sandberg described a visit to Uddevalla in which he observed “the human orientation of the work being done…a group of nine workers assembled a car from beginning to end. They conferred with each other while working, resulting in the completion of the entire car before the morning coffee break. This team like all others in the plant had no supervisor. And the first level manager of this and the seven other teams in the product workshop was on vacation; the groups could clearly manage their own work.”
My work along these lines of reinventing the labor model drew interest from others in the automotive industry, and many came to visit the factories. In 1973 and 1974, we hosted visits from Henry Ford II and Leonard Woodcock, the latter then president of the United Auto Workers union. I came to know and like both of these men enormously. Ford loved the Kalmar plant, and told me, “Pehr, this is a revolution!” Leonard Woodcock was also impressed with Kalmar’s humanization of the labor system. It was an issue that had long been of concern to him. Ten years prior to his visit to Kalmar, a 1964 New York Times article reported the UAW’s refusal to drop demands for better conditions in return for an improved financial package. The article stated, “Leonard Woodcock, UAW vice president and director of the General Motors Department, said at a news conference today that he had no illusions that the workers ‘can be bought off this time’ on working conditions. ‘Our purpose this year is to humanize conditions in the General Motors plants,’ he said.”
Woodcock himself was truly a great humanist. He loved people. And I found him to be an extraordinary person in many ways. His visit to the Kalmar plant was the first time I had the occasion to meet him, and I thought he was very different from most of the union bosses I had encountered. He was very much admired in many circles and had an excellent reputation with the union members. At that time, he ranked ninth on the infamous “Nixon Enemies List,” which to me is a fact that in and of itself made for a solid endorsement of his character and integrity.
Leonard and I started a dialogue after his Kalmar visit. He later came to visit me at my country home in the Swedish archipelago, and we became close friends. I found Leonard to be a human being with almost no prejudice, which I found unusual for a union leader. The scope of his social commitment and his professional aptitude was uniquely wide. He was a champion of civil rights who had marched with Martin Luther King Jr., and as Jimmy Carter’s personal representative in Beijing, he successfully negotiated reestablishing US-China ties after a lapse of thirty years. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called him a “distinguished leader and a trusted advisor to American presidents from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton,” and said that “with patience, skill and a low-key
