Trucks and buses roll out of Scania’s assembly facility in Johannesburg. Most of these are then sold locally, while some are exported to other neighbouring African countries. The plant, which opened in 2003, employs around 75 people and is a CKD operation, with chassis assembled on the lines and other parts such as the cab shipped in from Brazil. 

Speaking to AMS, assembly plant manager Deon Flusk explains the way in which the plant is similar to others in the Scania production network. “Our facility is wholly owned by Scania and the VW Group,” he says. “So what you see out here is pretty much the same as what our colleagues will do in the larger plants that are located in Sweden and elsewhere, but we just do it on a smaller scale. This means that many of our processes are manual. We don’t have high end electronic tooling that our colleagues do, though we produce the same trucks.”

With manual processes at the heart of the Scania plant, not much has changed over recent years in terms of technology. However, the facility itself has undergone a transformation…