The SAAB Malm? plant is interesting in many aspects. So let's talk about Volvo.
In a very simplified way you can say the Malm? plant was created because Saab wanted to be treated as equals with Volvo. The Saab plant was housed on the premises of an old wharf after the same had gone belly up, so was the Volvo plant in Uddevalla which set up already in 1986 after the wharf there closed in 1984. It also mirrors Volvos plant in it's humanistic "Reflective production" methods. Volvo had previously set up another factory on this method in Kalmar already in 1974, when Kalmar Verkstad (which made railway stock and purpose-built post cars) went belly up.
Now you may be thinking that anything that went belly up in the 70's and 80's was handed over to Volvo. You'd be partly right, these factories were set up with funds from the investment funds. An investment fund, what is that? Well, because profit was shameful in the 70's, and Swedish industry did so much of it, a large portion of it was locked in investment funds. Not your own investment funds mind you, the governments investment funds (but with your name on it). These could only be released by the government for projects it deemed worthy. Building new car factories using humanistic ideals? Where do we sign, the government asked. The government threw in a few freebies too in the form of infrastructure projects around the plants and sold the land for nothing (literally 1 SEK for millions of square meters).
The idea was of course to design experimental plants that would contribute to a more humanised production and make Swedish car industry more competitive. If we look to how long they kept the plants online, it went pretty badly. The Saab plant was inaugurated in the fall of 1989 and shut down production in June 1991. The Volvo plant in Uddevalla and Kalmar lasted longer, all the way up to 1993.
As for the reflective production method itself, it was probably not bad. Quality was good, productivity was also (perhaps surprisingly) good and people were happy. However because one team (in the most extreme case in Uddevalla) built the entire car it took a lot of training to bring new people up to speed and hence it was difficult to replace people.
A journey in production practice in Volvo said:
The Uddevalla is however the most radical example of Reflective production in Volvo. This plant was in all its aspects a humanistic production system. The cycle time was in general 480 minutes but one team of two female assembly workers assembled the entire car by themselves.
For Volvo (and likely Saab too) there was also the matter of what people at the "old" plants (Volvo Torslanda in Gothenburg) and HQ (Gothenburg) thought about the project.
A journey in production practice in Volvo. said:
The suspicion against the Uddevalla project was solid in Torslanda. The alliances against the new concepts cut through management, middle management and blue-collar workers union. The middle management feared, of good reasons, that their positions as managers should be quite different and maybe threatened, in Uddevalla. The blue-collar union in Torslanda was very critical to the Uddevalla concept. It came to situations there the blue-collar union representatives in Uddevalla felt opposed by their organisation in Torslanda.
This was especially tough as the union members in Uddevalla felt they really were taking part in an important project to upgrade industrial blue-collar work. The difficulties to define the difference between a blue and white-collar worker in the new long cycle group oriented production systems were certainly one of the reasons. There was a fear that these new professional workers should leave the union. Another reason to the opposition from Torslanda was the fear that the experience and knowledge gained through years of industrial practice should be obsolete when new theories and methods proved competitive. Uddevalla would get into focus instead of Torslanda and individual knowledge and seniority from car industry should be overdone by the skills of young, maybe former fishermen and shipbuilders in Uddevalla.
Interesting enough the attitude from the central metal workers union turned out to be quite different from their largest member, the local branch at Volvo. They supported openly the Uddevalla project in the end and took an active role in the critical discussion following the close down of the plant.
Source
The Uddevalla plant was restarted (using conventional production methods*) two years later in cooperation with TWR, changed ownership to Volvo and then Pininfarina before shutting down in 2013. I worked there for a few years.
*Altough I wasn't there when TWR was I understood nothing about their production was conventional. People said it was a miracle every time a car rolled of the line. Bunch of constantly drunk brits :lol: