Erik Söderholm

I was born and raised in the small city of Luleå, and for a long time I was convinced that I would leave the city at the first given opportunity. Therefore I did not only surprise myself, but also many others, by declaring that I was heading for a Master of Science in manufacturing at Luleå University of Technology. During my studies I did 10 month of internship at Scania trucks, working with everything from manual welding to operating robotics. This period of time was really helpful for my motivation to study to say the least. (I realized that if I would not get a degree, this was be where I could end up.)

In 2005 I was about to complete my studies, all that was left was doing my thesis. Here I really seized the opportunity to leave Luleå and Sweden far behind. I ended up on the opposite side of the globe, in Adelaide, Australia where I worked at Electrolux cooking plant for five month planning the layout and logistics for an assembly line for inbuilt ovens. Our proposal for the layout got accepted by the management and for the last month of the project we were actually working on implementing our production line. Seen below are the cavity assembly, the cavity assembly fixture, both on the drawing board and in real life.

In 2006 I was back in Adelaide again. This time in the role as a house improver. (Probably more of a “improviser”) For four months I pretended to be a craftsman, doing everything from building and painting to gardening. When the house was out on the market, I realized it was time to either look for something else to occupy myself with or go back to Sweden. Since the two alternatives implicit meant choosing between Australian summer and Swedish winter I stayed in Adelaide working on a project regarding the manufacturing of rain water tanks.

Back in Sweden,(in the spring) I applied for a PhD project and was accepted! This project was in the field of Human work and focused on competence. Very interesting and exciting indeed, but unfortunately nothing for me. Therefore I was more than excited when the opportunity to apply for my current project appeared. Once again, I got lucky!

The project that I have been working in since March 2008 is called “Standardized Design Process”. (See link below).

Standardized Design Process

Personal interests are sports (especially squash and downhill skiing, traveling as well as spending time with family and friends.

In this course I want to learn more about how UML and SysML can be used to describe the processes and activities that I am studying within my research project. I want to be able to map dependencies and information flow within the design process. Additionally I am excited to explore the possibilities that parametric design could offer the company that I collaborate with in my research project.

To capture my progress and struggles, I have created a page resembling a Blog:

My thoughts on Parametric Design

Course Assignment

Course Assignment presentation