Aktiebolaget Volvo (abbreviated to AB Volvo) is a Swedish multinational manufacturing company based in Gothenburg, Sweden, and is legally stylized as VOLVO.
Volvo Cars, also based in Gothenburg, has been part of AB Volvo since 1999, when it was sold to Ford Motor Company. Volvo supplies a wide range of vehicles, trucks, buses and other vehicles to the automotive industry, with the core activity being the production and distribution of high performance vehicles. Since 2010, the Volvo Group, a subsidiary of the Swedish automotive holding company, has held a majority stake in Volvo Motor Co., Ltd., the parent company of Volvo.
Volvo Group headquarters are located in Gothenburg, Sweden, with headquarters in Stockholm and subsidiaries in Finland, the United States, Germany, Japan, China and South Korea.
Flexibility and agility are becoming increasingly important in manufacturing, as they offer the ability to meet customer-specific configurations and changing customer requirements. The rapid entry of key personnel allows Volvo to be more flexible and agile in responding to changing market and customer needs. The global company employs more than 1.5 million people worldwide, employs over 100,000 people and operates production facilities in 18 countries.
Volvo plans to introduce AR-controlled QA processes at several locations in the near future and is actively developing new use cases along the value chain.
Butterfly, the world’s largest supplier of autonomous vehicles to the automotive industry and member of the European Automobile Association (EAA).
The AR solution comes with mixed reality, which transfers 3D data and QA details directly to the physical engine and tracks and anchors the content using computer vision. With the augmented reality of Vuforia, operators can remember the latest configuration in 3D, making sorting through stacks of paper easier and creating a digital thread that creates a single source of truth. It also provides the ability to create a real-time view with high resolution engine configuration information, ensuring that Q aA staff can access and view the latest engine configurations and supporting materials in real time.
The feedback loop created by the introduction of the digital thread provides timely operational insights and captures important feedback to improve the engineering and manufacturing process and further differentiate Volvo in terms of quality and technical excellence. By eliminating the costs and risks of a paper-based approach, the solution enables Q aA engineers to capture specific defects in real time. AR experience is sent back to Volvo’s engineering team for further analysis, improving future engine designs. Bidirectional data transmission can help to analyse defects faster and more efficiently, further improving Volvo’s quality throughput.
The plant’s flexibility means how quickly we can introduce new production shifts to follow the market, “says Volvo’s Chief Technology Officer Dr. Jorgen Eriksson. The digital thread and other related PTC technologies will have a transformative effect, replacing paper-based processes and revolutionizing the way people are empowered and educated, he says.
Volvo has established an established augmented reality (AR) provider to improve engine quality control, but has found it difficult to scale and integrate the application process for the desired use case. In the search for alternative solutions, the increased product complexity and customer-specific configuration that comes from engineering prior to the manufacturing process was a decisive prerequisite.
Each engine requires up to 40 tests, a task reserved for Volvo’s most experienced engineers. It takes five weeks for a new operator to be trained in the complex testing process, which increases overall costs and quality.
This is particularly true for the Volvo Group, which will receive almost half of truck orders in the US and almost three quarters of orders in Europe in 2018.
Over the years, the company has built a reputation for safety and quirky design, and today’s announcement is intended to underscore that. With the increasing complexity of the products and unique configurations in volume and change speed, new challenges arise for quality assurance. To adapt to this changing landscape, Volvo is taking a number of initiatives to rethink the quality of its trucks and new technologies such as autonomous driving and driver assistance systems.
The company’s safety engineers have reworked and reinforced the front structure of the car to take account of the absence of an internal combustion engine. The traditional grille that cools the chugging pistons of most gas-powered Volvos has disappeared and been revamped.
The drunk in the front trunk can hold up to 30 litres of cargo, and under the hood the engine has been replaced by a new air conditioning system and a more efficient exhaust system. Behind the radiator grille, the car looks similar to the internal combustion engine of the XC40, but without exhaust.
The battery must be charged to 80 percent of its capacity in 40 minutes with a quick charging system. A single fee based on the European WLTP standard is offered to allow the car manufacturer to receive an official EPA rating.