1941: First 50 years - new strategy going for growth

The owners of Scania-Vabis realised that the company possessed exceptional strengths with its innovative capacity, successful products and largely institutional customer base. From the mid-1930s, efforts to revitalise the company engaged both MD Gunnar Lindmark’s team and external experts. Young rationalisation expert named Carl-Bertel Nathhorst was hired and a year later appointed MD. Nathhorst managed to rejuvenate the entire management. He installed promising young engineers in positions that many of them would hold for several decades, making their marks on the company’s development for a long time. The product philosophy was not to build everything the customers asked for, but to engineer a product system that could meet as many customer demands as possible, as well as to provide products and features that the customers did not yet know they needed. This was the birth of the modular product philosophy that was to become a major success factor for Scania in the decades to come.

Corporate milestones