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Strategic Alignment in Servitization Transformation: A Retrospective Case Study
(2026) Eriksson, David; Friman, Erik; Gustafsson, Johan; Liljeström, Adrian; Marthinsson, Oskar; Österling Junkargård, Måns-Perra
Problem Despite the extensive body of servitization research, there remains a limited understanding of how transformation processes unfold over time within firms. Prior studies have primarily emphasised the importance of deliberate strategic efforts for enabling successful servitization. More recent research, however, increasingly suggests that servitization also unfolds through emergent organisational adaptation over time. Nevertheless, how deliberate and emergent strategy interact in practice, and how this interplay shapes strategic alignment throughout the transformation process, remains insufficiently understood in the literature. Aim The aim of this study is to explore how deliberate and emergent strategy interact over time within a servitization transformation, and how associated alignment processes shape the transformation trajectory. In doing so, the study seeks to address the identified research gap regarding processual dynamics of servitization transformation. Theoretical framework This study draws on servitization literature and a strategy process perspective, where transformation is understood as the interplay between deliberate and emergent strategies and where strategic alignment constitutes a central mechanism. It further applies dynamic capabilities theory to explain how organisations adapt over time through sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring activities. These perspectives are integrated into an adapted theoretical framework illustrating how the strategy process unfolds in a servitization transformation. Method The study adopts a qualitative and exploratory research design, conducted as a single-case study of a division within a manufacturing firm. Data was primarily collected through semi structured interviews with respondents from multiple organisational levels and functions, complemented by secondary data. The findings were first analysed using an adjusted thematic analysis and subsequently interpreted through the adapted theoretical framework, following an abductive process where theory and empirical data are iteratively linked. Results and implications The study shows that the servitization transformation unfolded through an ongoing interplay between deliberate and emergent strategy, where the relative influence of each varied depending on contextual conditions. Emergent developments, particularly driven by customer demand, played a central role in shaping the realised strategy throughout the transformation. At the same time, deliberate strategy remained important for enabling coordinated reconfiguring and sustaining strategic alignment between intended and realised strategy over time. Rather than developing through stable implementation processes, alignment evolves unevenly through periods of disruption, partial alignment and broader realignment. The study contributes to existing servitization literature by providing a more process-oriented understanding of how deliberate and emergent developments interact over time and shape strategic alignment throughout the transformation process. The findings further suggest that a high degree of customer involvement may intensify the role of emergent strategy within servitization contexts. From a managerial perspective, the study highlights the importance of enabling continuous organisational adaptation and developing reconfiguring capabilities.
Developing Interior Concepts for Long-Haul Truck Driver Well-Being
(2026) Broman Gustavsson, Kevin; Greisz, Olivia
rofessional long-haul truck drivers face significant and well-documented health challenges linked to their profession, including sedentary work, irregular schedules, social isolation, and limited access to healthy food. Despite growing awareness of these challenges, the truck cab's food-related architecture has largely remained unchanged. This thesis investigates how food-related support features can be integrated into the truck cab to enhance the driver's well-being, focusing on long-haul truck drivers in Northern Europe. The thesis was conducted in collaboration with the CAB Ergonomics team at Volvo Trucks and followed a structured product development process. A pre-study combining a survey and semi-structured interviews with long-haul drivers in Sweden revealed findings that fundamentally redirected the project. Contrary to the initial hypothesis where it was believed that the limited food-preparation capabilities of the interior truck cab had a negative impact on driver well-being, drivers expressed high satisfaction with existing cab appliances. Instead, the interviews consistently surfaced a different and more fundamental need to mentally and physically separate the act of driving from the act of resting. Drivers regularly moved to the passenger seat during breaks not necessarily because it was better suited for eating, but because it provided a psychological signal that work had paused. From the pre-study, eating habits were identified as the most prominent negative factor affecting well-being, yet the barriers were largely structural due to unpredictable schedules, parking shortages, and time pressure. The primary unmet need that was identified and followed in the thesis was therefore not a richer food preparation environment but a dedicated lounge space within the cab. These insights directed the concept development toward reorganizing the cab interior rather than adding new technology. Through a structured product development process including morphological matrix generation, concept screening, and iterative evaluation with the Volvo Trucks CAB Ergonomics team, a winning concept was selected. The concept was modelled using Catia V5 and integrated into a virtual reality environment using VRED where ergonomic evaluations were performed. The final concept is an entirely new single-driver truck cab interior, consisting of a convertible rear bed configuration with an adapted dashboard preparation zone, an additional storage module, and a refrigerator in the dashboard. Together these elements create a coherent lounge and dining area physically separated from the driving position, addressing the central finding of the study. The results demonstrate that meaningful improvements to driver well-being through in-cab food-related features are achievable, and that the transition toward a cab that feels like home represents a significant competitive opportunity for Volvo Trucks.
Optimizing Material Flow by Applying Lean methodology
(2026) Güven, Hayrettin
This study examines how a stringent regulatory industry like the pharmaceutical industry could adopt modern operational practices like Industry 4.0 and Lean principles. This thesis presents a case study at AstraZeneca’s Material Management in Gothenburg, aiming to identify bottlenecks within lean principles and propose data driven improvements. Using methods like methodological triangulation by combining different methods such as Gemba walks, semi-structured interviews, and datasets. The research identifies multiple issues such as information flow as the primary bottleneck. Research hits communication issues between departments by providing incorrect documentation, creating waste, and defect wastes that cascade into secondary inefficiencies. The department also lacks Key Performance Indicators and cross-departmental transparency, resulting in a “black box effect”. The data also reveals a growing trend in reported issues year-over-year, suggesting that organizational growth introduces new operational challenge that current processes are not equipped to handle This study attempts to suggest possible solutions on KPI implementation, a visual process interface with checkpoints, standardized checklists, new communication channels, and an AI chatbot for inquiries attempting to replace static communication methods such as frequently asked questions
Copy Number Profiling of ctDNA via Shallow WGS in NSCLC - Evaluation of an Integrated Workflow for the Detection of Somatic Alterations
(2026) Miller, Josefin
Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains a leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide, necessitating robust and minimally invasive methods for longitudinal monitoring of therapeutic response and tumor evolution. Liquid biopsies utilizing cell-free DNA (cfDNA) offer a promising approach, however, capturing somatic copy number alterations (CNAs) from circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) is highly challenging due to low tumor fractions and signal dilution from healthy background cfDNA. This thesis evaluates and optimizes an integrated workflow for copy number profiling via shallow whole genome sequencing (sWGS) at ultra-low sequencing depths (~0.0044x to 0.01x). The bioinformatic pipelines Ion Reporter, ichorCNA, and WisecondorX were systematically benchmarked using healthy controls, an undiluted A549 cell line positive control, and clinical plasma samples. To increase sensitivity for low-fraction ctDNA signals, a bisection strategy was used to adjust the hidden Markov model (HMM) parameters of an existing clinical Ion Reporter workflow. All three pipelines were evaluated across different bin sizes (0.5 Mb, 1.0 Mb, and 2.0 Mb), with ichorCNA and WisecondorX processed under default configurations. The benchmarking framework revealed distinct architectural trade-offs across the pipelines at this ultra-low depth. While the optimized Ion Reporter workflow acted conservatively to minimize false-positive calls in validation controls, WisecondorX achieved the highest overall call accuracy (Macro F1 = 0.548) on the positive control data, and ichorCNA provided the highest sensitivity in clinical samples at the expense of vulnerability to background technical noise. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that at this ultra-low sequencing depth, pipeline selection should align with the clinical objective: a conservative architecture like Ion Reporter is well-suited to reduce false positives, whereas tools like WisecondorX or ichorCNA are better suited when maximizing the detection of low-amplitude variants is the priority.
Assessment of segment-level vortex-induced vibration response of a deepwater drilling riser using high-fidelity modelling
(2026) Pal-Singh, Vijay
Based on the literature reviewed, few studies have analysed the vortex-induced vibration response of a low-aspect-ratio computational fluid dynamics riser model, and the use of dynamic properties derived from a global riser model appears to be largely unexplored. A realistic deepwater drilling riser with buoyancy modules is modelled in OrcaFlex, an extensively-used offshore industry software, using a wake oscillator model. Separately, a short segment of this riser is modelled in CFD using Star-CCM+ in a two-way fluid-structure interaction setup. The segment’s physical, environmental, and dynamic properties are derived from a selected segment in the full-scale riser model in OrcaFlex. The dynamic current-induced VIV response of the segment is compared between OrcaFlex and Star-CCM+ to determine whether the responses are comparable. It is seen that both models display similar dominant response, dominant lift frequencies, and lock-in behaviour across a range of current velocity cases. The RMS cross-flow displacement and lift coefficient present a similar trend across cases, except in cases with significant changes in top tension, in which the RMS values diverge significantly between the full-scale riser model in OrcaFlex and the riser segment model in Star-CCM+. These results indicate that high-fidelity modelling of short riser segments can reproduce the VIV response metrics of a global wake oscillator riser model under various conditions, except in cases where the top tension is changed significantly and complicates global riser dynamics.