Technical experts and growing competencies

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.

acquired valuable experience within the area of standardization—in contrast to the relatively inexperienced standardization engineers, whose inexperience has them facing a number of challenges, as described in earlier sections. More specifically in regard to standards and standardization, two types of human competence seem to be important in Scania.

The first type, which is purely organizationally oriented, resembles the experience and familiarity that follow any kind of activity after repeated execution—whether that activity refers to purchasing, production processes, or corporate standardization activities. In other words, that type of competence is predominantly organizational and not uniquely standards related.

Area specialist B: “We have one process in the company, that is called Lessons-Learnt. After you do the work, you go for the Lessons-Lessons-Learnt. What did we learn from this [standardization] project? And in that process you can have some kind of follow-up. What did we do right, what did we do wrong, what can we do better next time? It is very beneficial for the company [overall].”

The above description depicts the overall process of learning how to work with standards and standardization in a corporate setting; that is, appreciate from experience what works and what does not, what is important, and how to make the process of corporate standardization more efficient. That is precisely the type of competence that technical experts have acquired over decades (since they have been repeatedly managing standardization activities within and outside of Scania), and that standardization engineers lack (since they were not working with standards and standardization until a couple of years ago, when they were recruited by Scania).

One of the main reasons why the standardization department has not managed to maintain control of the overall corporate standardization management and comprise the core of it, despite organizationally being supposed to, pertains to the shortage of such experience and learning—which the technical experts did not undertake to pass on to the newly recruited standardization engineers.

Certainly, it is not as simple as simply passing on experience acquired over years, but to some degree the technical experts could have done so by educating the standardization engineers on organizational practices and policies (namely, those practices that were left to “fade away” after the previous standardization team left the company). Added to that claim is the strong depiction (formed through the interviews and informal conversations with the interviewees) that the newly recruited team would have been more than willing to be educated by the more

experienced personnel; they appeared aware of their inexperience, but very open to and interested in expanding their knowledge.

On the other hand, the second type of competence observed in Scania is more uniquely standards related, and refers to the learning and experience that established standards enforce. That is, by creating, developing, and updating corporate standards, the company has built up company-specific technical knowledge, which is demonstrated and shared in the standards per se.

Area specialist A: “Some standards of course are know-how and important information within Scania.”

Manager E: “In some [standards] we are building knowledge. The value of the company is not really in the buildings. The value, especially for us in R&D, [is]

in our knowledge.”

Area specialist B: “The standards inform people how to do things. For those people that know exactly what to do, you don’t need a standard. But mainly it’s for the people that are unsure. That’s a reason why standards are so important.

Because the standard is not a document of rules, sometimes it is a document of education and training that is available [to] everyone.”

Area specialist A: “…for me it has always been a very important area to help with [standards], to build up knowledge. I think you see that in organizations that are very successful, they have standardized critical areas in a good way and in a very structured way.”

An important distinction here is that such standards-related benefits can also be obtained by the company by simply adopting international standards, as long as the standards are applicable to the specific purposes and operations of the organization. That is a huge challenge for organizations, which, in order to reap benefits, need to properly adapt the international standard to their specific circumstances. On the contrary, when corporate standards are developed within those company-specific circumstances, they are likely to serve their organizational purpose more resourcefully.

What Scania (and many other organizations) endeavors to do is find a balance between those two situations, yet often leaning towards internal standardization.

That is, while keeping informed in regard to international standardization (for instance, via regular participation in standardization committees), Scania’s corporate standards might deviate from international ones. More specifically,

Scania’s corporate standards either comprise adjusted international standards (adjusted to suit the company’s needs), or standards developed wholly within the company.