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5 Scania AB: A premium player

5.4 Corporate standardization resources

5.4.2 Human resources

The abovementioned limitations in financial means translate into a downsizing of standardization engineers not only in numbers, but also in human capital—

that is, workforce experience and familiarity with the area. Although the capabilities and capacity of the personnel are not compromised by their lack of

experience, it does challenge their everyday work and communication with the rest of the organization.

Standardization engineer B: “[We need] more people, simply. Because at the moment as you see I have a very broad area, I have three major areas. So, if we want this group to be experts and have knowledge and develop, then I think we need to have more people and divide the areas so that we don’t have [such] broad ones. I can do my job okay, within all these areas. But if the company wants me to be an expert, not only coordinate [the work], then I need to focus on one area.”

Area specialist A: “I think [the standardization department] has been a bit mishandled. The status [has] decreased a bit.”

Area specialist C: “[The standardization department] should be more involved in different areas. Maybe they are already, but I think the problem is also that it is more of an administration unit. They don't really have specific knowledge about different areas of the truck. I mean, they cannot write a standard themselves; they are dependent on experts around them.”

Scania’s standardization department is composed of a relatively inexperienced crew (in regard to the standardization arena and the company per se). Since the department’s leader has had no previous standardization-related experience, such experience does not appear to have been prioritized when recruiting the other team members (judging by the configuration of the team, as well as indirect conversation with the manager).

Standardization engineer A: “The thing is that I’m quite new in the standardization group….”

Standardization engineer B: “I’m new at this job but I’m also new as an engineer in general.”

Manager A, Corporate Standards: “We have to know the external landscape better. But we don’t so far, since we are rather new in the group. 1–2 years is no experience within the standardization area. A lot of people have been working in the area for 20–30 years and those people do know everything.”

In addition, keeping in mind the aforementioned financial restrictions and the company’s low prioritization of standardization work, it can be anticipated that the company’s standardization department might not have access to experienced

and accomplished professionals within the field of corporate or international standardization. The most highly experienced and skilled individuals within each field (and therefore within the standardization arena as well) will most likely be expensive assets for a company to recruit (encompassing higher personal, as well as professional, demands, referring to the overall infrastructure around corporate standardization work). Since Scania’s decision makers do not demonstrate a readiness to adjust to higher financial demands for corporate standardization in order to utilize it strategically, less experienced personnel fulfill the company’s conditions and requirements. However, precisely taking into account the relatively limited experience and competence within the standardization arena, it is even more challenging for Scania’s standardization department to be the core of overall corporate standardization management.

Besides the relative lack of experience within the standardization arena, the vast majority of the unit’s members are new to the company, which signifies an additional lack of Scania expertise—that is, long experience within the company—as well. Although this is not a prohibitive factor for personnel contributions, it does pose additional challenges for the unit’s visibility and influence over the company. This is not necessarily problematic for an organization’s overall corporate standardization management, as long as control of the processes lies somewhere else in the organization. Particularly regarding Scania, where the standardization department is formally supposed to maintain control of the overall process (which is not the case in practice), a question that arises is where this control lies.

Manager A, Corporate Standards: “Our experience in the standards group is very young, if you look at our group. Even though I have lots of Scania experience, I don't have so much standards experience. And that’s also a challenge for the group, because my standardization engineers don’t have much of Scania experience either. So we need to educate ourselves about the process of working with standards.”

Manager A, Corporate Standards: “The standardization department is very old.

However, we as [personnel] are pretty new. And I think that the last years at least, we have had mainly an internal role.”

Coordination of internal standardization management activities is indeed left to the company’s standardization department. Nonetheless, external standardization is entirely managed by Scania’s technical experts, most of whom are exceptionally experienced staff. Characteristically, experienced and

knowledgeable personnel (in regard to both standardization and the organization per se) are endorsed to partake in external standardization committees, contending that effective participation is not otherwise viable.

Area specialist A: “[Standardization work] is based on experience, I think.”

Area specialist A: “It has differed, the last 30 years. Now we have the knowledge behind the standards.”

Area specialist B: “[I have] great knowledge of this company. Because I worked in this place, up in this hill, in R&D as we say, for 20 years.”

Area specialist C: “In my former position in Scania, in materials’ technology, I was working with standards as well. And after that [the last 10 years] I [have been] the head of supplier quality assurance, regarding suppliers’ deliveries according to our standards.”

Manager B: “I am the main [person] responsible for the core engine, so to speak.

And I have been working in Scania for 26 years.”

To sum up the above, the limited technical knowledge and expertise of the standardization engineers, pinpointed both by the engineers themselves and other parties of the company—that is, managers and area specialists—is stressed as an important deficiency of today’s standardization unit. These limitations keep the standardization unit from obtaining control of corporate standardization management, and arguably inhibits their contribution since they are forced into a merely internal coordinative role. On the other hand, technical knowledge and expertise are possessed by the area experts, who participate effectively in external committees and completely manage Scania’s external standardization management, at the same time that they contribute to the internal processes. Effective participation in standards setting and overall standardization management require a high level of competence—for example, technical and business expertise—otherwise the personnel would not be capable of handling the standards-related processes.