Göran Gustafsson

The Volvo Robust Engineering System: how to make robust design work in an industrial context

The Volvo Robust Engineering System (VRES) is an adaptation of the robust design concept in an industrial context. It consists of five different principles as a basic value system, and eight practices that contribute to the implementation of system, parameter and tolerance design. VRES was developed through a learning alliance between Volvo and Chalmers University of Technology. This paper presents VRES and discusses it in relation to the literature-based robust design methodology, which has been a major inspiration for VRES development. VRES has expanded and validated the concepts previously developed in the literature by adding the elements needed for practical application.

A method to understand and improve your engineering processes using Value Stream Mapping

This paper describes two ways of mapping engineering processes in product development—Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and a simplified variant of VSM—which are compared with Process Mapping (PM). PM is closely related to VSM but applied differently although the goal—to identify possible process improvements—is often the same. The results of the study indicate that simplified ways of doing VSM are the most feasible. They are easier to get started with, they have a higher potential for improvement of the process and one gets an instant overview of the mapped process. Further, it is more likely that the improvement will be implemented when the users are committed through their involvement in the mapping process.

A National Academic-Industrial Research Program with an Integrated Graduate Research School

ProViking® is a successful Swedish twelve-year research program in product development and production. Rather than to stimulate the emergence of new companies, it aims at strengthening the existing Swedish industry by producing scientific results at the highest international level and Ph.D.’s for work in the industry. ProViking® comprises a large number of research projects, jointly run by universities and industrial companies, and a national graduate school which provides courses for the Ph.D. students that work in the projects. The total ProViking® budget is close to 110 M€, of which 43 M€ is supplied by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research and the rest by the industrial project partners. Since the program started in 2002, forty-one different research projects have so far resulted in several hundred conferences and journal papers. Some fifteen patents have either been granted or have applications pending as a result of the research, and almost one hundred Ph.D.’s have graduated.

From DBT to TDB – a novel view on design-build projects

We propose that design-build-test projects are changed into test-design-buildnprojects, in line with the philosophy in lean product development. More focusnis put on the early stages of the PD process, with knowledge discovery andntesting to find out which of several/many possible solutions to a problemnshould be developed into a product. This fits very well with CDIO ideas. Wenwant to discuss the problems associated with such a change in a round tablensession.