Volvo Construction Equipment Research Articles

Multinationals’ value chain configuration for product diversification in emerging markets: Western firms in China

PurposeThis study aims to analyse how multinational corporations (MNCs) organise value chain activities to penetrate new market segments. It contributes by expanding traditional decisions regarding the vertical fine-slicing of value chain activities (whether performed internally or externally) and the consideration of resource-sharing decisions (integration or separation) for each value chain function.Design/methodology/approachThe authors draw on primary data collected from two case study firms operating in the large emerging Chinese market: Volvo Construction Equipment AB and Epiroc AB. In-depth cases illustrate how foreign MNCs expand into new market segments and simultaneously target both the lower-priced mid-market and the premium segments in the Chinese mining and construction industry.FindingsThe results reveal that product diversification creates challenges for managers who must oversee new (vertical) value chains, often simultaneously. Beyond geography and modes of governance, managers must decide whether to integrate or separate value chain activities for the new product lines. The study identifies four main strategic choices for firms to address this complexity, focusing on the decision to internalise or externalise (i.e. within or across organisational boundaries) and integrate or separate value chain activities between different product lines.Originality/valueThis study builds upon the internalisation theory and recent international business contributions that focus on value chain configurations to explain MNCs’ product diversification as a growth strategy in a host emerging market. It also sheds light on the choice of conducting new activities in-house or externally and elucidates firms’ managerial decisions to operationally integrate or separate individual value chain activities. The study provides insights into the drivers explaining managerial decisions to configure value chain activities across product lines and contributes to the growing body of literature on MNC activities in emerging economies by highlighting that product diversification impacts entry mode diversity and resource sharing across units.

Research on the quality of diesel fuel provided by LLC Ferronordic Trading House

Ferronordic is the official dealer for Volvo Construction Equipment, Dressta, Mecalac and Rottne. In addition to sales and after-sales support for Volvo Construction Equipment, the company is a dealer for servicing Volvo and Renault Trucks, as well as a dealer for Volvo Penta for servicing industrial and marine engines in some regions of Russia. The company collaborates with other well-known brands and several suppliers of attachments. The Swedish concern Volvo Group supplies to the Russian market trucks equipped with diesel engines with Common Rail injection system, as well as with pump nozzles. Diesel mechanical and electronic pump nozzles perform timely and metered injection of the working mixture into the combustion chambers of the cylinders of a diesel engine. The mechanical nozzles are driven by a high-pressure fuel pump, while the electronic ones are controlled by the Common Rail electronic injection system and are constantly under intense mechanical stress. Poor quality diesel fuel leads to: loss of power, lack of traction and instability of the engine; overexpenditure and fuel leakage from sprayers; change in spray angle and time; change in the amount of injected mixture; the appearance of knocks and noises, black and bluish smoke during exhaust. The results of research work on the study of the quality of diesel fuel of the company LLC Ferronordic Trading House are presented. The physicochemical properties of diesel fuel were studied experimentally, such as: density, fractional composition, mass fraction of sulfur, mass fraction of water, flash point, limiting filterability temperature and cloud point.

The Measure of: Volvo Concept Wheel Loader Zeux

Volvo Construction Equipment and Lego Technic have teamed up, with the help of children, to create an autonomous concept wheel loader of the future - scooping a Gold Award at the iF Design Award 2019.

Numerical fatigue life analysis of a high frequency mechanical impact treated industrial component based on damage mechanics models

AbstractAfter post weld treatment with high frequency mechanical impact (HFMI) treatment of welds, a significant increase of fatigue life (up to a factor of 10) can be achieved. During the last years numerous experimental tests of welded joints with simple geometry under constant amplitude loading have been performed to quantify the positive effect of high frequency mechanical impact treatment. Due to the lack of methods for the prediction of the high frequency mechanical impact benefits, a widespread use of this process is not the case yet. Furthermore, it is still not clear if the results of these fatigue tests can be transferred to complex geometries and complex loading conditions such as in industrial applications. Therefore, an approach to assess the fatigue life of complex welded structures under variable amplitude loading was developed. For this purpose, high frequency mechanical impact treatment and fatigue load of simple welded specimen made of S690QL steel were simulated with finite element analysis (FEA) firstly. Then, the needed damage parameters for the fatigue life correlation were evaluated from the finite element post‐processing. The calculated life time to crack initiation was in good agreement with the experimental fatigue test results. In the next step, this procedure was implemented on a welded arm of an evacuator of type EW180B of the company Volvo Construction Equipment made of S700MC. The variable amplitude load measured under real service condition was transferred to single constant amplitude load cycles using a rainflow‐counting algorithm. By simulation and damage mechanics evaluation of each load cycle the total damage sum could be calculated and compared with the experimental results from Volvo Construction Equipment.

A behavioral change-based approach to energy efficiency in a manufacturing plant

In the realm of industrial energy efficiency studies, very little research has been done to understand the barriers and opportunities to influence behavior of production workers and the corresponding energy-saving potentials. This paper analyzes a case study of Volvo Construction Equipment AB in Braås, Sweden (VCE Braås), that has reduced its relative idle electricity use by more than 10 percentage points during 2013–2016 by implementing a strategy of changing everyday behavior of production workers. The results based on interviews with actors involved in the energy efficiency project showed that a concrete goal, the employment of a fulltime operational leader who earlier worked as a production worker at VCE Braås, and the involvement of both the leadership and employees in project management were key to the success of the project.

Scalable validation of industrial equipment using a functional DSMS

A stream validation system called SVALI is developed in order to continuously validate correct behavior of industrial equipment. A functional data model allows the user to define meta-data, analyses, and queries about the monitored equipment in terms of types and functions. Two different approaches to validate that sensor readings in a data stream indicate correct equipment behavior are supported: with the model-and-validate approach anomalies are detected based on a physical model, while with learn-and-validate anomalies are detected by comparing streaming data with a model of normal behavior learnt during a training period. Both models are expressed on a high level using the functional data model and query language. The experiments show that parallel stream processing enables SVALI to scale very well with respect to system throughput and response time. The paper is based on a real world application for wheel loader slippage detection at Volvo Construction Equipment implemented in SVALI.

Culture clashes in cross-border mergers and acquisitions: A case study of Sweden's Volvo and South Korea's Samsung

This study investigates the way in which employees from acquiring and acquired firms experience cultural differences during post-acquisition integration. We examined Volvo Construction Equipment's acquisition of Samsung Heavy Industry's division of construction equipment. Two ontologically bipolar conceptualizations of culture – the classic and social constructivist concept of culture – are discussed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at Volvo Construction Equipment Korea twice over an 11-year interval, in 2001 and 2012, respectively. The results suggest that while the classic concept of culture correctly predicts what kinds of culture-dependent problems may occur during post-acquisition integration, the social constructivist concept of culture can better predict whether or not these problems may occur.

Classification of physiological signals for wheel loader operators using Multi-scale Entropy analysis and case-based reasoning

Sensor signal fusion is becoming increasingly important in many areas including medical diagnosis and classification. Today, clinicians/experts often do the diagnosis of stress, sleepiness and tiredness on the basis of information collected from several physiological sensor signals. Since there are large individual variations when analyzing the sensor measurements and systems with single sensor, they could easily be vulnerable to uncertain noises/interferences in such domain; multiple sensors could provide more robust and reliable decision. Therefore, this paper presents a classification approach i.e. Multivariate Multiscale Entropy Analysis–Case-Based Reasoning (MMSE–CBR) that classifies physiological parameters of wheel loader operators by combining CBR approach with a data level fusion method named Multivariate Multiscale Entropy (MMSE). The MMSE algorithm supports complexity analysis of multivariate biological recordings by aggregating several sensor measurements e.g., Inter-beat-Interval (IBI) and Heart Rate (HR) from Electrocardiogram (ECG), Finger Temperature (FT), Skin Conductance (SC) and Respiration Rate (RR). Here, MMSE has been applied to extract features to formulate a case by fusing a number of physiological signals and the CBR approach is applied to classify the cases by retrieving most similar cases from the case library. Finally, the proposed approach i.e. MMSE–CBR has been evaluated with the data from professional drivers at Volvo Construction Equipment, Sweden. The results demonstrate that the proposed system that fuses information at data level could classify ‘stressed’ and ‘healthy’ subjects 83.33% correctly compare to an expert’s classification. Furthermore, with another data set the achieved accuracy (83.3%) indicates that it could also classify two different conditions ‘adapt’ (training) and ‘sharp’ (real-life driving) for the wheel loader operators. Thus, the new approach of MMSE–CBR could support in classification of operators and may be of interest to researchers developing systems based on information collected from different sensor sources.

Analyzing Culture Clashes in Post-acquisition Integration between Volvo and Samsung

This study investigates the way in which employees from acquiring and acquired firms experience cultural differences during post- acquisition integration. We examined Volvo Construction Equipment¡¯s acquisition of Samsung Heavy Industry¡¯s division of construction equipment. Two ontologically bipolar conceptualizations of culture - the classic and social constructivist concept of culture – are discussed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at Volvo Construction Equipment Korea twice with 11-year interval in 2001 and 2012 respectively. The results suggest that while the classic concept of culture correctly predicts what kinds of culture-dependent problems may occur during post- acquisition integration, the social constructivist concept of culture can better predict whether these problems may occur, or not.