The standardization unit in Scania

The standardization unit in Scania (which comprises a centralized office for standards and standardization) is strictly responsible for all corporate standards, meaning that the standardization engineers must be always involved in any standardization process. In that sense, they possess strict formal authority and are intended to be a coordinative function of corporate standardization management. The documents they deal with are always called standards, denoted by the prefix STD and then the number of the standard. Formally, no STD document can be created, updated, or deleted without UTMS taking part in it.

However, in practice it is often the case that employees in other departments write their own instructions, which they can call technical regulations, or even standards.

Area specialist A: “It’s often the case that people [within the company] write technical documents; PD, TB, TR, technical regulations. We have standards, and we also have special regulations. And it’s very often that they go like ‘yes, let’s write a new TB.’ And the TB is growing and growing, and should have been standardized long before it grew that much. They [employees within different parts of the organization] are writing a TB and putting a lot of time [into] that, while they could have asked the standards department or any one of us, and we could have told them to apply an ISO standard, or an existing Scania standard, instead of this very time-consuming technical requirement writing.”

Manager A, Corporate Standards: “There are the so-called ‘position standards’

for production. So people in production standardize their positions, how to work, what is the most efficient way, etc. And if that ‘position standard’ is used for more than one group, then it could be an STD document. But it’s not! So, somebody has to create those position standards, some people are using them, some people are improving them, they are stored somewhere, and they are

obviously used and are a benefit for Scania. And I’m not saying that everybody should sit within the group, but we could cooperate. We could lead all those processes and then have everything in one database that everybody can access.”

Standardization engineer A: “I think that’s one of our main issues, and many possibilities for the future. To tell people that we are here, that we are part of the company. There is a Corporate Standards unit, meaning that we have the standards, and we have the team, that is taking care of the standards. There are some documents in the company that are perhaps called standards, but are not under our responsibility. So we are trying to catch up and make people aware.

Since we are the central station for all standards, we make sure that every standard has the same design, is saved with us, we have the same quality, the same routine for sending out for feedback, etc. We offer some kind of a service related to standards. So, to answer your question, no, not everyone in the company knows that we exist. Which is a pity. But we are working on it.”

The standardization unit was, since the foundation of the company, put in place in order to manage standardization-related issues—and formally, it is still supposed to do so. Hence, since it does not retain that control and purpose today, the question is where does standardization-related control lie in the company. Informally, it is the technical experts that manage this aspect (as described below). However, rather than being pre-decided, expert control rather emerged due to technical expertise and long experience, and subsequently experts’ capability to handle standardization-related issues (particularly external ones), at the same time that the standardization unit’s position in the company was gradually weakening.

Former CEO: “It was a growing opinion in the company, instead of having it [the standardization department] centralized, we just pushed it out to the different operation areas. It was a management decision … You can say that instead of having central standards [that is, a centralized department], you go to local standards, where the activity takes place. You delegate that to the different operation areas.”

In other words, the company’s top management did not appear particularly interested in safeguarding the centralized power of the standardization department, but, on the contrary, saw value in decentralizing it to the different departments. The various local experts were given increasing independence and responsibility in regard to managing their own standardization areas, and did not necessarily seek the standardization department’s assistance—which of

course aggravated the centralized unit’s weakening since it ended up unable to fulfill even a coordinative function or get ahold of who was responsible for what.

Another aspect that intensified the abovementioned decay has been a human resources turnover—that is, experienced and qualified standardization engineers leaving the company and being replaced by newcomers.

Area specialist A: “Now I am working with [name of current standardization engineer], who is new here. Previously, with the one I used to work with … we had a system of reviewing the standards with our key suppliers. We reviewed together the draft of the standards, while it was not finished yet. So then we could get their input as well. I haven’t done it with [name of current standardization engineer] yet. But I used to do that a lot a year ago, with [name of previous standardization engineer].”

Manager C: “It [referring to a series of standardization-related meetings that used to take place in the company] just faded away. Someone didn’t call a meeting and then it was out of the calendar, and no one complained. We just had one less meeting.”

Hence, as stated by the medium-level manager above, corporate standardization-related practicies just “faded away” along with changes in employees within the standardization unit (who included those who, for instance, called those particular meetings among the different parts of the organization). On the other hand, higher- and medium-level management’s priority was not to protect such practices, since they did not deal with the task of assuring and enforcing the standardization unit’s policies or control, mainly due to the fact that standardization efforts and activities are not a strategic priority for the company.

Accordingly, though the technical experts, who did remain in their positions during the aforementioned changes, could probably have promoted tighter collaboration with the newly formed standardization unit, they did not do so either. Α major reason for this was that experts comprise very experienced personnel (regarding both standardization activities and the company per se), which indicated that they were capable of taking over the technical aspects of corporate standardization. Hence, they did not appear interested in promoting close collaboration with the newly recruited (and relatively inexperienced) members of the standardization unit, either due to inertia (that is, an aversion to committing time to efforts that were not demanded by higher management) or distrust (of the new unit’s competences)—or both.

All in all, the technical experts are indeed perfectly capable of managing the external activities of corporate standardization, as well as contributing internally towards technical solutions. The downside of this setup is the rather strict focus on the technical aspects—that is, a lack of strategic utilization of corporate standardization—since the experts are operationally oriented, rather than strategic leaders.

Nevertheless, the company’s higher management does not appear to prioritize corporate standardization or seem particularly interested or focused on the strategic potentials of it.