You want to stay here
At Olsson Parts, people enjoy themselves and several of the employees have been with them for a long time. Like Marie and Tommy for example.
Marie, purchasing department:
If you are happy at a workplace where you are allowed to develop and are encouraged to take responsibility and take the initiative, it is easy to stay. One person who knows this is Marie Lindegren:– I have worked here since I left secondary school. I started in the warehouse, but for many years have been working in purchasing, a job that I really enjoy.When Marie joined Olsson Parts almost thirty years ago, the business was completely different.
– The workforce was much smaller, and you had to do a little of everything in the warehouse back then, from receiving goods to packing and invoicing. I took over the purchasing element when one of my colleagues retired, and I’m still here.
The company now has a total of seven buyers, dealing with around two hundred established suppliers who jointly supply all of the more than 30,000 different items that Olsson Parts stocks
Almost 30 years at Olssons then...?
– Yes, who would have thought that when I started in the warehouse as a newly qualified student. But thirty years in the same place says a great deal about what the workplace is like and that you are happy, doesn’t it.Tommy in the product department
Tommy Abrahamsson joined Olssons i Ellös in the summer of 1990.– “At that time, everyone did everything. I received customer orders, picked and packed, and made sure that our customers received what they had ordered. The order documentation comprised a handwritten note, and if you put it down on a shelf somewhere, then you were done for,” laughs Tommy.The order management system was computerised a couple of years later, and the handwritten notes became a distant memory. The famous Olsson catalogues were still being produced completely manually at that time, using the cut and paste method.
– I didn’t work with this personally, although I was involved when the warehouse and consequently the production of the catalogues was to be digitalised. We keyed in every single part and made individual connections between the warehouse and the business system, one result of which was that the catalogues were able to be generated automatically from the system. It involved an enormous amount of work, remembers Tommy, continuing:
– It took almost five years to get through our entire product range, as new parts were being added all the time. But it definitely simplified our work, even though the catalogues still required some manual intervention,” observes Tommy.
Tried out on his own tractors
The digitalisation work was launched in 1999, with the first automatically generated catalogue being the one that presented the Volvo BM range. Volvo BM’s agricultural side is particularly close to Tommy’s heart, as he was the instigator behind the brand being included the range:– I brought my own tractors and checked what we had that would fit. This was the starting point for our Volvo BM range, which subsequently caused it to take off.
Worked in many parts of the company
When you have an employment number as low as 13, it is clear that you have had the opportunity to do a great deal. Tommy has worked on the purchasing side and has been a member of both the Board of Directors and the executive management. During the 2000s, in conjunction with the automation of the catalogue, he was made Product Manager. As such, he was involved in the creation of Olssons’ own workshop and that which, for some ten years, has been the heart of Olsson Parts’ product and quality control.– Incredibly enjoyable years.
Today, Tommy is back in the product group, although now with full responsibility for internal training at the company. He still gets involved in the workshop from time to time:
– Variety is good. It is probably because of all the different work duties I’ve had that I have stayed so long. My job is never boring.
