The global truck manufacturers Volvo Trucks are evolving together with its competition. As technology progress and the products get more advance and the importance of understanding the process increases to become a key factor to not obstruct the road into the future. Volvo has a clear strategy of having a fully verified vehicle when it leaves the mainline. This gives the software part of the production a big role when a bigger part of the vehicle can be tested trough communication with the electronic control units. This is something that Volvo has been using for a long time but now when the next step is approaching Volvo wants to visualize this computer-based process of production.

This report is a result of the situation and covers the thesis job that has been conducted to evaluate a strategic initiative at the Tuve factory in Gothenburg. The project is aimed towards the end part of the mainline and with the focus on software QA (quality assurance). The case is based on the strategy that Volvo has regarding producing fully verified products out of the mainline. Today's way of working is not according to strategy and the "end of line" buffer is including operations that are supposed to be placed before the last station on the mainline. Due to the growing pressure on the production previous work has been conducted to move out QA operations since the takt time has not been managed at that time.

By using process and logic mapping and data analytics the Software QA process's current state was documented. A concept was generated and tested with a production simulation built to analyze the future load that is expected. The simulation that was made in Siemens - Plant Simulation was also built to visualize and create a transparent software process. By comparing the simulation result and the current state analysis a clear trend was detected. 

The results indicated that the initiative would affect the company positively in the long-term. It would increase the transparency of the Software QA process and would help the continuous improvement work that is highly sought-after. However, the initiative would have to be seen as a long-term investment since a lot of resources would be needed to manage the transition to handle daily production. Therefore the recommendation is made to initiate the concept transformation slowly and focus mainly on preventing deviations and improving the QA process.

The simulation was built with the success of visualizing the process but lack of data maturity in the large variant range gave the simulation a distorted output. However, the simulations indicated to show the correct direction of the result and would be a great tool for decision making for the future progress of the production line. The project may not have reached the south after result, but the recommendation that is being stated has facts that build trust for future work.