A Living Heritage

Advocating teamwork and ‘consensus’ decisions, the management introduced advanced analysis methods at the laboratory, started preparing for a modular product range and took advantage of international contacts in their innovation work. The twist “build what customers need, not what they want” implied that engineers were expected to understand customers’ operating conditions. Another move to tighten customer bonds was to make the service organisation part of the feedback loop to R&D. During three decades, systems and components were harmonised in preparation for the fully-modularised GPRT-series in 1980. Modularisation is Scania’s way of broadening the customers’ choice; interfaces between components and systems are designed to maximise flexibility. This global product range paved the way for volume growth and expansion worldwide.