Manufacturology

An interview with Gunnar Sohlenius

He founded the Stock­holm branch of the Swedish Insti­tute for Pro­duc­tion Engi­neer­ing Research, IVF, dur­ing a break in his doc­toral stud­ies in 1965. Before he had time to com­plete his Ph.D. he became a pro­fes­sor in pro­duc­tion engi­neer­ing at Linköping Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy, LiTH (1971–1976),  and in man­u­fac­tur­ing sys­tems at the Royal Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy, KTH, in Stock­holm (1977–2000). He has been vice pres­i­dent of KTH, and chair­man of two large national Swedish research pro­grammes. He is a mem­ber of sci­en­tific engi­neer­ing acad­e­mies in Swe­den and Fin­land, and a For­eign Asso­ciate in the National Acad­emy of Engi­neer­ing, NAE, in the USA. He has been fel­low and pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tional Acad­emy for Pro­duc­tion Engi­neer­ing, CIRP, where he is now a hon­orary member.

Gun­nar Sohlenius

Of his many sci­en­tific papers, one with the brief title “Con­cur­rent engi­neer­ing” [CIRP Annals, vol. 41, nr. 2, pp. 645–655, 1992], has been cited 250 times accord­ing to Google Scholar. After retire­ment he finally had the time to write his Ph.D. the­sis, as well as a book that sum­marises his insights after a long and suc­cess­ful career. I asked pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus Gun­nar Sohle­nius, to answer a few questions.

How do you think that the view on indus­trial pro­duc­tion dif­fers today com­pared to when you started work­ing in the mid­dle of the 1960’s?

The oppor­tu­nity to adapt the prod­uct to dif­fer­ent cus­tomers’ spe­cific needs has devel­oped sig­nif­i­cantly since then. Among us who worked for IVF at the time, the PRODEVENT–project came to give us the pos­si­bil­i­ties to focus on order dri­ven, cus­tomer adapted pro­duc­tion, and then find that pro­duc­tion was a wider con­cept than man­u­fac­tur­ing. The pro­duc­tion sys­tem must evolve for every new prod­uct generation.

In your the­sis you write that there is a need for increased knowl­edge regard­ing how indus­trial pro­duc­tion serves as a engine of wel­fare. Today there are those who think that tomorrow’s wel­fare must be based on a dif­fer­ent ground, for exam­ple on the ser­vice indus­try. How do you see this? Has indus­trial pro­duc­tion served its purpose?

With respect to both phys­i­cal prod­ucts as well as ser­vice prod­ucts, we must use the oppor­tu­nity to raise pro­duc­tiv­ity and intro­duce pro­duc­tion sys­tems that help us do that. Pro­duc­tiv­ity improve­ments where the level of automa­tion increases has a par­tic­u­larly high poten­tial. How­ever, this requires that one must not spend more resources on main­tain­ing the auto­mated sys­tem than what the pro­duc­tiv­ity increase pro­vides room for. Too costly automa­tion must be avoided. I devel­oped these ideas in my book The nature of the indus­trial inno­va­tion process [Cox­moor Pub­lish­ing, 2008], which is a fur­ther devel­op­ment of my thesis.

Over the last decade there has been an amaz­ing devel­op­ment of the Chi­nese econ­omy and stan­dard of liv­ing, which to a large degree is due to an inter­na­tion­ally very com­pet­i­tive indus­try. Here, in Swe­den, we’re in a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion. Our stan­dard of liv­ing is since long among the high­est in the world. Is indus­trial pro­duc­tion equally impor­tant for the fur­ther devel­op­ment of wel­fare in Swe­den as it is to the devel­op­ing countries?

There is a link between pro­duc­tiv­ity and stan­dard of liv­ing that I feel that it is impor­tant to under­stand and make use of. The stan­dard is reflected in the pay­back obtained per unit of work employed. In prin­ci­ple, it is pos­si­ble to be pro­duc­tive by work­ing hard and/or by work­ing smart. One way of work­ing smart is to develop and use tools, rang­ing from man­ual tools to auto­mated pro­duc­tion sys­tems. If you want to be robustly com­pet­i­tive through high pro­duc­tiv­ity, you must be bet­ter than your com­peti­tors on devel­op­ment and use of effi­cient auto­mated tools. Again, see my book.

Today, envi­ron­men­tal issues are more impor­tant than ever, and many think that reduced con­sump­tion is a neces­sity in order to cre­ate a long-term sus­tain­able soci­ety. How does the rela­tion between con­sump­tion, pro­duc­tiv­ity and wel­fare actu­ally look? Is indus­trial growth a pre­con­di­tion of increased stan­dard of living?

I have respect for the fact that this ques­tion can be dif­fi­cult to answer cor­rectly. I’ll seek to shed some light on the answer. It can be argued that high stan­dards are worth striv­ing for. It is how­ever impor­tant to limit the appetite to what you have use for. Today we con­sume exces­sively and have also devel­oped a waste­ful buy/wear/throw away lifestyle. I believe that indus­trial devel­op­ment and growth is a pre­req­ui­site for increased mate­r­ial stan­dard. This should still be fru­gal with resources. It may per­haps be dif­fi­cult to define a more eco­nom­i­cal use of resources. Of course, this should be pos­si­ble if we, as cus­tomers sys­tem­at­i­cally demanded eco­nom­i­cal use of resources. This, of course, does not con­flict with high pro­duc­tiv­ity, of the right kind, that meets func­tional, aes­thetic and eth­i­cal requirements.

Within the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity, the con­cept of pro­duc­tion sys­tems evolved from being mostly tech­ni­cal (com­puter inte­grated man­u­fac­tur­ing, CIM), towards a more holis­tic con­cept which con­sid­ers the inter­ac­tion between inno­va­tion processes, sup­port sys­tems and man­u­fac­tur­ing oper­a­tions. Does this mean that tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment in the field of pro­duc­tion is no longer as crit­i­cal to pro­duc­tiv­ity, and that oppor­tu­ni­ties to increase pro­duc­tiv­ity now depend more on cre­ation of effi­cient sys­tems? How do you see this? What are the prac­ti­cal ben­e­fits of a holis­tic per­spec­tive on the indus­trial pro­duc­tion system?

The prac­ti­cal use is more and bet­ter func­tion­ing pro­duc­tion sys­tems that more pro­duc­tively pro­duce prod­ucts that meet cus­tomer needs and expec­ta­tions. This of course requires that prod­uct devel­op­ers suc­cess­fully design prod­ucts that well enough sat­isfy or exceed the intended cus­tomers’ expec­ta­tions. This is espe­cially true if com­pe­ti­tion is fierce. Right func­tion for each cus­tomer in a pro­duc­tive man­ner should be the goal of pro­duc­tion sys­tem development.

You have pointed out that the pro­duc­tion sys­tem itself should be regarded as an inter­nal prod­uct to be devel­oped in the same man­ner as the prod­ucts the com­pa­nies pro­duce and mar­ket.

We have rea­son to be cre­ative and pro­duc­tive in both prod­uct devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion engi­neer­ing. Pro­duc­tion devel­op­ment is spe­cial in that pro­duc­tiv­ity is always a pri­mary objec­tive. Pro­duc­tiv­ity is not in the same way a key goal in prod­uct devel­op­ment even if it is not totally unim­por­tant. An impor­tant issue here is the need for recog­ni­tion that the pro­duc­tion sys­tem is a prod­uct in itself, which must be devel­oped with the aim of qual­i­ta­tively and pro­duc­tively pro­duc­ing cus­tomised prod­ucts. The pro­duc­tion sys­tem with its meth­ods, machin­ery and peo­ple with the goal of devel­op­ing the right prod­uct to the right cus­tomer must be devel­oped and main­tained in a skil­ful way. Then com­pet­i­tive pro­duc­tion of com­pet­i­tive prod­ucts can happen.

Many highly suc­cess­ful and inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts emerged when pas­sion­ate engi­neers worked with their pet projects out­side ordi­nary work hours. A Swedish exam­ple is the devel­op­ment of IP–telephony at Eric­s­son, where hob­by­ist projects were pro­moted to offi­cial strat­egy at a crit­i­cal time. Other exam­ples include The Inter­net, Linux, and per­sonal com­put­ers [Tim O’Reilly: “Where real inno­va­tion hap­pens”, Forbes, Feb­ru­ary 3, 2009]. These are exam­ples where engi­neers used their skills in a cre­ative and play­ful way and devel­oped the prod­ucts they wanted them­selves. Do you think that such curios­ity dri­ven inno­va­tion could play a role in pro­duc­tion engi­neer­ing as well?

I have the impres­sion that the answer to that ques­tion is yes. If com­pe­ti­tion in the prod­uct area is low, you can man­age to make money with­out bring­ing about the sharpest pro­duc­tion. If com­pe­ti­tion is fierce on the other hand, you must strengthen your com­pet­i­tive­ness through inno­v­a­tive pro­duc­tion devel­op­ment. You can find details regard­ing this in the out­come of the PRODEVENT–project. This was a long time ago, so the results may have to be adapted to the cur­rent view of today. Pro­duc­tion devel­op­ment needs to be inte­grated with prod­uct devel­op­ment. Cre­ativ­ity and play­ful­ness are impor­tant for the entire prod­uct / pro­duc­tion devel­op­ment. Also note that out­sourc­ing on sub­con­trac­tors should be seen as one pos­si­ble option to meet pro­duc­tion needs. Play­ful­ness, in a seri­ous way, seems impor­tant for the whole of the prod­uct devel­op­ment process.

Last ques­tion: What do you think is the most inter­est­ing and impor­tant ideas in the pro­duc­tion area today?

The idea that the pro­duc­tion sys­tem devel­ops towards the require­ments needed for pro­duc­tion of the requested products.

The use of com­put­ers for mod­el­ling and sim­u­la­tion of prod­ucts and man­u­fac­tur­ing, both in devel­op­ment and in pro­duc­tion. This gives new oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate highly auto­mated flex­i­ble pro­duc­tion sys­tems, where bet­ter and more pro­duc­tive work for edu­cated and skilled peo­ple stim­u­lates over­all qual­ity and productivity.

New mate­ri­als and pro­cess­ing meth­ods are always impor­tant areas of development.

Thank you for tak­ing the time to answer my ques­tions and share your insights.

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