14 nationalities developing autonomous transport solutions
11 AUGUST 2017
From Europe to Asia and on to Oceania. When it comes to the development of autonomous transport solutions, a total of fourteen nationalities are represented. The Predevelopment department recruits all over the world.
Laura Dal Col is a development engineer from Italy with a D.Eng. in control technology from LAAS-CNRS (Laboratoire d’Analyse et d’Architecture des Systèmes) in Toulouse, France. Since the beginning of the year she has been working at the Technical Centre. Her colleagues in the department come from Russia, Austria, Pakistan, China, South Korea, Portugal, India, Britain, Iran, France, Ukraine, Syria and Australia. As well as Sweden.
“The expertise we are looking for is usually global. Being able to speak Swedish is not a requirement for working with us,” says Per Sahlholm, Platform & Architecture.
The focus is instead on more important characteristics. It started for Laura with a 3-month exchange period at KTH in Stockholm during 2015.
“That was when I met people who were working on platooning and started building my network.”
Found a suitable job at Scania
Once she completed her education, she was interested in pursuing a career at a company. She began looking for a specific job and she found one she liked at Scania. It was a huge change to move here, but for the better.
“Living in Stockholm is so easy. Everyone is so helpful, though I cannot speak Swedish fluently yet.”
She appreciates the fact that the work involves a long-term process, projects that can last for several years, where, for instance, they build sustainable automation solutions that link together the automatic management centre with Scania’s intelligent, self-driving vehicles.
Get a lot back
The job can also involve fixing specific problems that need to be addressed quickly. Working in agile teams with people who have more experience is also something that suits her – you get a lot back in terms of work and personally.
Laura feels that one of the major benefits of Scania is that it is possible to test things all the time.
“Everything is available and there is no bureaucracy so we can work quickly and with that comes rapid development.”
Gunnar Tornmalm is the head of Predevelopment and says that the multicultural nature of the group is something that has emerged naturally, and that the environment provides a humility about what other people think, which helps reduce deadlocks and definitely enhances creativity.
“Scania is an international company and experience from outside creates a broader perspective. The benefits need to be experienced!”
But all the different nationalities have consequences, of course:
“Our working language is poor English and we are proud of it!”
“Scania is an international company and experience from outside creates a broader perspective.”
