Influencing factors on the implementation and integration of strategic improvement systems in multinational corporations: A case study of Volvo Production System in geographically dispersed subsidiaries within Volvo Group Trucks Powertrain

Abstract

In today's competitive environment companies face the challenges of continuously working towards making their operations more efficient and effective in pursuance to remain a competitive advantage. In order to cultivate a culture of continuous improvement many enterprises have chosen to develop tailored company specific production systems, known as “XPS”, that aims to optimize the company’s operations. At Volvo Group Powertrain, the company has initiated the Volvo Production System (VPS), which has been recently implemented in all subsidiaries within the company. In the literature, there has been discussions regarding the potential transferability of an XPS, where previous research indicates that several factors may influence the implementation and integration of an XPS, whereby others argue that an XPS can be universally transferred. The purpose of this research is therefore to investigate such influencing factors, in order to further identify key success factors and barriers that may influence the implementation and integration of an XPS in geographically dispersed subsidiaries. Performing a case study at Volvo Group Powertrain have further accomplished the purpose of this study. The theoretical framework mainly identifies five main factors influencing the XPS implementation, namely: knowledge sharing, absorptive capacity, corporate socialization, change management and leadership. This study contributes to three additional influential factors, not identified in the earlier research. These factors are the role of the global XPS coaches, the role of the local XPS manager as well as the XPS introduction to each subsidiary, and hence provides three main contributions to the theory.