Från förslagsverksamhet till ständiga förbättringar på Husqvarna AB
An organization that uses all of its improvement opportunities has a great advantage compared to its competitors. It is an important task when it comes to continuous improvements of every process. Up until September 2007, Husqvarna AB had a suggestion committee who evaluated every suggestion separately and the proposer received a payment if the suggestion was approved by the committee. However, this system did not work satisfying enough to fulfill Husqvarna?s needs and they are now looking for a system that can handle the ideas from the employees in a more effective way. The purpose of this report is to come up with a system better suited for Husqvarna, where every employee has a chance to be a part in the company?s development process. With help from relevant litterateur, study visits at Volvo Car Corporation in Skövde and C2 Management in Stockholm and interviews with employees at Husqvarna AB, a plan for how a new system could look like is presented in this report.At Husqvarna chainsaw and landscape assembly plant, they already have a developed and satisfactory structure to treat ideas of improvement from the employees. They currently use Excel in order to document their improvements. In order for Husqvarna to work with improvements in a more efficient way, Excel ought to be exchanged to a database more suited for handling this type of data. Suggestions for appropriate databases are System C2 which can be bought from C2 Management or a system developed in Lotus Notes. A new database enables all units and even factories, within Husqvarna to document their improvements. This way, Husqvarna will have a more ?learning by doing focus? where the different units can study each other?s suggestions and gain inspiration and ideas for the own operation.The different ideas for improvement shall be divided into three categories; Continuous improvements, bigger improvements (PDCA) and big improvements (rationalization). Under the category ?continuous improvements?, all improvements that the group can deploy by themselves should be listed. This category will be managed by the group with no interaction from managers or other units. The only reward for this type of improvement is encouragement from the manager. For the ?bigger improvements?, all improvements that take more than three hours to complete, can be visualized and/or where help is needed from external parts will be listed. This category of improvements shall be listed in the database by the group itself and they should also manage as much of the deployment as possible. However, for this type of improvements help may be needed from other units and therefore, the group should address the improvement to its nearest manager for approval. Under this category, some kind of reward is possible. Under the category ?big improvements?, the improvements that will give Husqvarna large savings can be found. The idea shall be something far from what could be expected from the proposer. A minimum limit of saving for Husqvarna that the idea has to generate in order to be listed under this category ought to be placed. Husqvarna need to select some kind of management group who can decide from case to case how large the proposer?s reward should be. This type of improvements should also be listed in the database by the group.