Thesis - Optimizing Small Parts Box Flows in Truck Assembly

Transport is at the core of modern society. Imagine using your expertise to shape sustainable transport and infrastructure solutions for the future. If you seek to make a difference on a global scale, working with next-gen technologies and the sharpest collaborative teams, then we could be a perfect match. 

Project Description

The Volvo Trucks plant in Tuve, Gothenburg, produces heavy trucks for the global market. The assembly operation is characterized by high product variation, which creates complex material-flow requirements for small parts supplied in carton boxes. The flow must support components with both low and high consumption frequencies while ensuring reliable availability at the assembly line.

Current handling, replenishment, and call-off methods need to be reviewed to identify opportunities to improve material quality, flow efficiency, inventory control, ergonomics, and delivery reliability across both internal logistics and the external supply chain.

Task:

In collaboration with the production logistics, manufacturing, quality, and supply-chain teams in Tuve, review and investigate how small parts in carton boxes should be managed for a high-variation truck assembly operation. The study should cover parts with both low and high consumption frequencies and develop recommendations for an improved future-state flow. The students are expected to:

• Map the current end-to-end carton-box flow, from external supplier call-off and delivery to internal replenishment and presentation at the assembly line.
• Identify stakeholders and gather operational, quality, ergonomic, inventory, and system requirements.
• Segment small parts by consumption frequency, demand variation, carton characteristics, handling needs, and criticality.
• Evaluate how different replenishment and call-off principles perform for low-frequency and high-frequency parts.
• Analyze sources of quality loss, shortages, excess inventory, unnecessary handling, and disturbances in the current flow.
• Develop and compare future-state concepts for external call-off, inbound handling, storage, internal replenishment, and line-side presentation.
• Validate the preferred concept through data analysis, observations, simulations, or practical trials.
• Provide an implementation proposal with recommended principles, decision criteria, expected benefits, risks, and required next steps.

We require the work to be performed by a team of two students. Please state the name of your partner in your application.

Applicants without partner will not be considered.

Main location for the project group will be the assembly plant in Tuve, Gothenburg. The students are expected to spend most of the time on-site, collaborating with the engineering, maintenance, and production staff. Therefore we require at least one student to speak Swedish.

Contact:

Mikael Granbom, Process Technology Manager, Volvo Trucks Tuve mikael.granbom@volvo.com

Last day to apply: 2026-11-01

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We are committed to shaping the future landscape of efficient, safe, and sustainable transport solutions. Fulfilling our mission creates countless career opportunities for talents across the group’s leading brands and entities.

Applying to this job offers you the opportunity to join Volvo Group. Every day, you will be working with some of the sharpest and most creative brains in our field to be able to leave our society in better shape for the next generation. ​We are passionate about what we do, and we thrive on teamwork. ​We are almost 100,000 people united around the world by a culture of care, inclusiveness, and empowerment. 

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