For obvious reasons, a major international company like Volvo Trucks, together with its suppliers, generates large volumes of transport to and from its plants around the world.

These flows are being monitored regularly by the Group's logistics experts, who are implementing a range of activities on a continuous basis to achieve a major reduction in the number of transport movements and reduce their environmental impact significantly.

Volvo Trucks has three major plants in Europe - at Goteborg (Tuve) and Umea in Sweden, and in Ghent, Belgium. Materials and finished products are transported between these plants in a continuous flow. In addition, the plants receive continuous deliveries of materials from the company's many hundreds of suppliers.

Products are also transported from these three locations to and from Volvo's other plants, for example in Brazil and Australia, as well as the truck assembly plant in Iran. In some cases, these flows have grown without the necessary coordination, leading to 'unnecessary' transport movements.

Together with their colleagues at Volvo Logistics, the Volvo Trucks logistics experts have completed two major projects to improve transport coordination and are currently engaged in a third, every bigger project.

Measures implemented to date have yielded a significant reduction in adverse environmental impact, accompanied by a substantial reduction in costs. In most cases, action to improve the environment has also been accompanied by cost savings or straightforward profit gains.

In the 'Full loads' project, Volvo Trucks collaborated with Volvo Logistics to maximise truck loads and ship the goods directly to the various plants without intermediate stops or transhipment. Some parts go directly to the production line while other materials are placed in Volvo's efficient storage facilities until required.

This project has enabled the number of truck deliveries to be reduced. In the case of each supplier included in the project, the number of transport movements was reduced by approximately 15-20%, and a number of stops and transhipments eliminated. Last year, five new suppliers were added to the Tuve plant project, and similar work is under way in both Umea and Ghent.

Anette Kinde, Core Values Manager at Volvo Logistics, points out that this work is fully in line with the company's environmental programmes:

"Like every other company in the Volvo Group, environment is one of our core values. We perform environmental calculations for all new or modified logistics structures. In the case of 'Full loads', for example, a 2% increase in load factor can yield a reduction in CO2 emissions of up to 1,400 tonnes per year for Volvo Trucks alone. This is equivalent to the emissions generated by heating 260 homes with oil."

Almost half of the materials handled at the Volvo Trucks plant in Tuve, near Goteborg, is earmarked for CKD (Completely Knocked Down) kits destined for truck assembly operations in plants outside Europe.

Approximately 10,000 of the 15,000 CKDs in question go to the Iranian plant. Since some of the trucks assembled there are NH models developed and built mainly in Brazil, many containers of materials were previously consigned to Brazil by European suppliers to be 'topped up' with Brazilian parts before being shipped to Iran - a huge detour.

Following study by the logistics experts, it was found that about 100 truck parts and assemblies could be repackaged for export in the Goteborg plant itself, since Tuve is supplied with the same components for European production, eliminating some of the transatlantic traffic.

"We have now eliminated the shipment of about 460 forty-foot containers back and forth across the Atlantic, and ship the parts directly to Iran from Europe," says Stefan Karlsson, who is responsible for materials supply as part of European production.

"This represents a volume of 28,000 cubic metres, equivalent to a voyage by a fully-loaded Ro-Ro vessel between Europe and Brazil. This saves a great deal of fuel and money."

Volvo Logistics agrees and has estimated that the environmental gain is about 4,300 tonnes of carbon dioxide. The new system also results in lower emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide and particulates.

Stefan Karlsson has now been given the job of undertaking a third, much bigger project on the same lines. The focus in this case is on Volvo's cab production plant in Umea, in the far north of Sweden, which ships and receives materials by sea, rail and road alike, although mainly the latter.

"The project relates to the packaging of the cabs for the 15,000 trucks shipped to the CKD assembly plants around the world," he continues. "In Umea, we package cab components, which are then sent to Tuve, where the chassis materials are added and the complete kit is shipped - in two out of three cases - to the plant in Iran."

Every year, suppliers - mainly in southern and central Europe - ship 84,000 cubic metres of goods to Umea, while 70,000 cubic metres are shipped from the plant just to supply the CKD flow. This involves a significant number of empty transport runs.

At present, almost all of the parts concerned are shipped by suppliers in Europe to Umea, where they are merely repackaged and shipped south again to the Goteborg plant.

The goal is to make transport utilisation more efficient and more economical by enlisting the aid of Volvo Logistics experts with all of the purchasing activities and optimising the supplier orders. The goods will then be routed directly to the Tuve plant in Goteborg to achieve the above goal. In particular, the overall transport-kilometre figure will be reduced significantly.

"In the course of time, we will obviously be looking at all of our flows in Europe, where we have very many suppliers. Our aim is to fill the trucks and route directly to the plants without making detours.

"Many improvements can also be made in the area of sea freight. With considerable benefits to the environment," emphasises Stefan Karlsson.

Anette Kinde of Volvo Logistics agrees:

"Apart from working to make the transport operation more efficient, we are aiming to cut emissions per tonne-kilometre and we have set clear targets for this. To achieve these, we are requiring hauliers to introduce more efficient engines and use better fuels. We are also monitoring the load factors of sea freight containers on a continuous basis."