Here are some genealogical data:

• The Roots of the Eriksdatter/Danielsen/Pedersen families from Loppa and Batnfjorden in graphics.
• The Roots of the Eriksdatter/Danielsen/Pedersen families from Loppa and Batnfjorden in words.
• A verbal description of the Isene ancestors from Nordfjord
  done by Pål Nordenborg, my cousin.
• The Ole St. Isene Family Calendar,
• The Roots of the Isene family in graphics from Nordfjord

The documents above are all i Norwegian.

I had a very happy childhood. I grew up in a house built in 1854 close to Vestre Aker Kirke where my father was the church warden and manager of the cemetery. Our house had no bathroom and an outdoor lavatory until about 1951. But we were a very close and happy family. I got my initial education at the public school of Ullevaal Skole from the age of 7 (1943 - 1950). Part of that time was during World War II when we had to make do with class rooms at several other locations due to the fact that our school was occupied by the German army. I continued at the Fagerborg and Hegdehaugen Schools until June 1953.

Oh yes, my family name was of course Danielsen until 1983 when I and my whole family were allowed to take my mothers maiden name, Isene. My mother's father came from a small farm in Nordfjord by the name of Isene or Isane. There are lots of descendants from the Isene farms in Norway and in USA but we are the only family with that name in Sweden.

At the age of 17½, May 1953, I went to sea in the merchant marine. It did not last as long as I had expected, only about 7 months. The ship on which I was hired as an "Engine Boy" was a 9.350 TDW cargo vessel, "Black Tern", belonging to Sigurd Herlofsen & Co AS transporting goods of all kinds between European harbours (Rotterdam, Hamburg, Bremen and Antwerp) and North American harbours (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk and Newport News).
The ship was built in Landskrona 1945 with an eight cylinder Götaverken engine with long pistons rated at 5.500 BHP. The ship was part of a chartered fleet operated by The Black Diamond Steamship Corporation. Those 7 months in the summer and fall 1953 made me grow as a person but I also became aware of the fact that I was not cut out to be a sailor. It was not the profession for me and I never quite got over my seasickness.

I enlisted in the Norwegian Air Force in April 1954 and got a 6 month education as aircraft mechanic (crew chief) on Fighter/Bomber F84 "Thunderjet" with the 330 Squadron (education of brand new pilots from Toronto) at Gardermoen and on Fighter F86K "Saber" at the 337 Squadron also at Gardermoen after another 2 months education at the American Erding Air Base outside Munich. I also worked at the engine workshop at Gardermoen. I stayed in the Norwegian Air Force for almost three years (32 months).

I started my education at Göteborgs Tekniska Institut,(GTI) at 20 years of age to become an Engineer with engines and automotive technique as specialty. In May 1958 I graduated and in September the same year I was employed by Mr. Sigvard Forsell and Mr. Arne Roos at AB Volvo as a Design Engineer at the Truck Design Department (Truck Engineering).

I worked for Arne Roos and Sigvard Forsell on a number of projects in various positions within Product Engineering of Trucks and Busses until fall 1968. The first real project was to modernize the old L3750 to L4650 and L4750. I also had the responsibility for developing the next generation of this truck range to N84 and for replacing the B36AV gasoline engine with a diesel engine in the light L4300 and L4200 distribution trucks (later replaced by F83 and F82). I was for a while manager of the Bus Group within Truck Development Department and developed a small bus based on the F84 chassis aimed for the rural market in Norway and Sweden. I was also leading some projects in advanced engineering, The Modular Truck, The Bus Chassis without any Frame ("Ramlösa"), a new light bus based on F84 components, a combination of single leaf spring and air suspension etc.

In April 1967 I was assigned by the Engineering Executive Manager Mr. Tord Lidmalm to assist After Sales with how to build superstructures (bodies) on the Volvo Trucks in the Middle East. After three months in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria and Lebanon) 1967 (see pictures in "Image Gallery"), I came back to Gothenburg and was asked by Mr. Lidmalm to assist with the development of a "Computerized system for Parts Lists". To-day that would have been labeled as PDM. The application KD69 (KonstruktionsData 1969) was installed in 1969 and it took a few years before all Volvo cars, trucks and busses were transformed and updated in this new system (through lots of manual labor). The project was in fact the only implemented part of the enormous VIS Project (Volvo Information System) that never came to be installed as any practical applications. See Modern Datateknik 1970 (in Swedish) and some of the guys and dolls that participated in the project.

In January 1970 I met my wife Ingrid Nordlander. She was a Laboratory Assistant at the Bacteriological Laboratory at the Sahlgrenska Hospital in Gothenburg.
We got engaged in March same year. We moved into a new apartment in Kobbegården, Askim in fall 1970 and got married September 10 1971. Why hesitate when you know what you want!

The PDM applications "KDP" at Volvo Cars and "KOLA" at Volvo Trucks and Volvo Bus and "Z630" at Penta replaced KD69 in the early 80-ies, but they all contain lots of the original functionality of KD69 plus some ideas that could not be implemented due to lack of computer technique. The original KOLA has later been upgraded and modernized while most of the original Information Structure has been kept. Users recognize the information! The usage of KOLA is expanded to several more Business Lines and other Product Classes (Renault and Mack etc.) and is even used by Volvo CE for Engines and Embedded Software, ESW. Lately it has been decided to use KOLA as a replacement for PROST, the application developed with me as Project Manager. 

In fall 1972 I had an offer to move to France to participate in a joint venture project between four truck manufactures, Volvo Trucks, DAF, Saviem (today Renault, RVI and now owned by Volvo) and Magirus (today part of IVECO). I moved with my wife to France in February 1973 after having worked 2 weeks in Paris -2 weeks in Gothenburg etc during fall 1972.
The project was set up as a separate enterprise: European Truck Development, ETD. We started at the Saviem offices at Neauphle-le-Chateau but moved later to an office at Le Chesnay - Parly2 . I worked at several positions and functions such as Product Planning, Product Documentation (not computerized) and Standards etc., Belgium, as responsible for their Technical Administration including Product Documentation, Change Management, Standards, Competence Development, Technical Computing etc. The result of the common "Project of Four" and the continued Volvo project at Ghent was the "light duty truck range" F408 through F613 ranging from 8 to 13 tons. The brand new truck range was to be manufactured in the new factory at Oostakker by a team of Belgians who had never built a trucks before. This was a very interesting project!

In the beginning of 1975 I was offered a position at the newly established (Volvo Europa NV) Product Engineering in Ghent

My last involvement at ETD was in the ETD Tools Management Group. The four partners had Manufacturing Tools in common for well over 40 million FF (about the same in SEK). I represented Volvo Trucks in this group with representation from all the partners. We decided whether a change in the tool was possible, acceptable or not and who should pay for the change. We met every six weeks in Paris for two days.

While living in France we got our first son, Christopher. He was born in the end of May in Versailles. Our second son, Mattias, was born in Ghent. He missed my fortieth birthday by two days only. These guys have been of great joy to me and my wife and they still are! 
Christopher is working as a system developer in Stockholm, Mattias has been working with Part Planning and Process Analyses at Volvo CE, Customer Support (Parts) since early 2001 and is also involved in CST applications related to Product Documentation and Parts Catalogues.

In October 1978 we moved again. This time I was offered a position as manager for "Administrative Development" within Product Engineering at Volvo BM in Eskilstuna, Sweden. A few months later, the PROST Project (see articles in Swedish) was under way as part of a larger Project, MP80, with me as Project Manager. In March 1982 the first part of this PDM System was installed and in May 1984 the last installation was done including a mechanized conversion of data from old files to the new databases. Since then PROST has been under development until 1998 in order to cope with the dramatic changes Volvo BM had gone through:

• Restructure of the company from manufacturing farm and forest equipment to being one of the largest manufacturer of Construction Equipment in the world.
• Joint venture with Michigan/Euclid (picture of me, Lew Kiser from Michigan and Hank Vincenty from Euclid in 1986 ) in 1985 and to 50% sold out to Clark Transmission. The rest still owned by Volvo (but later bought back by Volvo).
• New ventures/merges through the purchase of Åkermans (excavators) in Eslöv, Sweden and Zettelmeyer now Volvo Compact Loaders in Konz, Germany.
• Split up of the original Volvo BM in smaller Product Companies within the VME Group: Volvo Articulated Haulers, Volvo Wheel Loaders, Volvo CE Components etc.
• New purchases: Groupe Pel-Job now Volvo Compact Excavators in Belley, France, Champion Road Machinery now Volvo Motor Graders in Goderich, Canada and Samsung Construction Equipment now Volvo Excavators in Changwon, Korea.
• Re-purchasing of the Michigan shares by Volvo and once again part of the Volvo Group under the name Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE Group)
• All IT people were moved 1997 to the newly formed Volvo IT in an organizational unit in Eskilstuna, VITE, including me. Until then I had always worked within Product Engineering.
• Since then Volvo has bought Renault Trucks and Mack including their IT operations. The IT of Renault and Mack has been reorganized under Volvo IT.
• Volvo CE has also acquired new products and new companies (Skid Steer and Back Hoe Loaders) and even sold part of companies (Euclid). Åkermans and Michigan (Heavy Loaders) were liquidated. The Construction Machine business is the kind of business where companies are bought and sold all the time. And that is a fact that has to be considered when developing and maintaining PDM Applications with interfaces to downstream applications.

The development of PROST was actually stopped 1998 due to a belief in new purchased applications such as Enovia, SAP and SmarTeam. An application based on SmartTeam has replaced a small part of PROST (Part Info). There are still more than 2000 user of the application, running well over 5 000 000 transactions per year. The PROST application celebrated it's 25 year's anniversary in operation in 2007! It seems like PROST will be replaced by KOLA within a year or two. 

During this transition I have been responsible for and participating in

• planning the development in the IT/IS area for Volvo BM, later VME and Volvo CE, Product Engineering Departments including Structural Analyses, Simulation and Technical Calculations
• introducing CAD (Intergraph MEDS, Microstation and later EMS) at Volvo BM later replaced by SolidEdge and Catia,
• introducing PROST as a Group PDM application throughout VME/Volvo CE (until Samsung and Champion were bought)
• further development of PROST and PDM applications and
• supporting MRP applications and several other PROST depending down-stream applications at several Volvo CE Companies and departments.
• developing applications for the support of ESW throughout the (Volvo and) Volvo CE organization as Project Manager for the IT solutions.

CAD and PDM was managed within Product Engineering from the start (1978). We kept the CAD development and support and the PDM application development and maintenance as two disciplines with very little in common. During the first years, CAD was just an engineering tool - a digital drawing board. There were just too few drawings and even fewer geometric models to call for any investment in any integration with the PDM applications. However, both disciplines were managed within the same department and outside the traditional IT environment. Here is a paper (in Swedish) with my ideas about the future of CAD/CAE written in 1984 and an example we used to test Computervision, Calma, Intergraph, Catia and other applications in 1983 - 85.

The organization responsible for these functions had Product Engineering as home base since the projects were born to service the engineering community. However, during the years 1984 to 1995 the importance of the applications and user community grew tremendously and the relation to the IT became more obvious. In 1995, the entire CAD/PDM organization were transferred and merged with the IT/IS organization of Volvo CE. A little later we were just gobbled by Volvo Data and Volvo IT and suddenly we were far away from our users and wondered how this could have happened.

I have never really been interested in budgets and politics and when I resigned as responsible for the PDM group when merged, I could concentrate on solving problems and using my experience and visionary capacity on things that interested me more.

In June 1995 I hosted the start-up conference of the joint Volvo Group PDM Project at Karmansbo (pictures of some of those who participated). I was part of that project until November 1998 when I chose not to move to Gothenburg and not to be employed by the "Volvo PDM Center". The project became too political and too much invaded by IBM and Dassault people - all the time new people with new angles and - - it cost several MSEK for nothing but "slideware".

Instead, I took on the responsibility as Project Manager of the IT parts of the Volvo CE ESW Project (a few pictures from the White Book meeting). ESW is an acronym for " Embedded Soft Ware" as a denomination for the programmable electronics in the machines manufactured by Volvo CE. The project encompassed the "Back-office" applications used to define and document the electronics, the tools used to load the software into the ECUs (Electronic Control Unit) in the machines at the plant when being manufactured and finally, the tools used to service the machines out in the field. It was a very interesting project involving all the three mega-processes Product Development, Order-to-Delivery and Sale-to-Repurchase. It did affect all Volvo CE Products and Product Companies using the tools mentioned. Some of these products were actually documented in other PDM applications than PROST. This was a project that suited me! Practical problems needing practical solutions! I enjoyed it until the project was finished and ended in spring 2000.

However, the Volvo PDM Project continued and has survived somehow even after the Car Company was sold to Ford. Today they have altered the name of the project to the Volvo PLM Project run by the "Volvo PLM Center" where they have decided on IBM's and Dassault Systeme's software Catia V5 for CAD. But, KOLA is still the important application for Volvo Trucks, Renault Trucks, Mack Trucks, Volvo Power Train, Volvo Buss and others, running and feeding the critical PDM information.

And at Volvo CE, PROST is still running after more than 27 years in operation, 30 years after the PROST Project was started. It is still feeding some 20 - 25 applications with critical data. Replacement is by far overdue, due to things like much more complex Products, "Credit Parts" are still in use, need of Part Version for Part related documentation and integration with the CAD-applications etc.

The solution applied in PROST where "Credit Parts" are used, needs to be replaced by "Variants", "Variant Families" and "Variant Combinations" in the same manner as used by Volvo Trucks and KOLA (was even used in KD69).

It is likely that Volvo CE will adopt the KOLA applications to be used for all their products. The only alternative to this is an upgrade of the PROST applications. Information structure is very similar in PROST and KOLA but the peresentation of data is different. Information exchange between PROST and KOLA should be easily manageable .

New challenges!

From January 1, 2001 I entered the status as retiree from Volvo and I started a business of my own: ISENE PDM Projections. So, I never stopped working. Directly after retirement I got an assignment at Volvo Motor Graders in Goderich, Ontario, Canada that lasted about a year and a half. I was Project Coordinator for the deployment of ESW in their machines, the graders. Here are two pictures from the project termination.

After that I have been involved in Volvo IT projects for Volvo Construction Equipment in Eskilstuna, Sweden, and in Korea, Canada, France and Germany.

During 2005 I became involved in two new things. One involvement was related to animal protection, mainly cats, as a secretary of a local club dedicated to Animal Protection. This was not too interesting since the board mostly had a lot of internal fights. At the annual meeting in April 2006 we got rid of the old board members and got a brand new board. I was voted out but I did not mind that at all! In 2009 I was again elected as regular member and as sectretary of the board in 2009. We have expanded the animal home and we have built a rest garden (a cage) outside the house in order to let the cats get outdoors when they feel like it. However, the economy is lousy.  

I have also been involved with the roads and streets within the small community where I live, Ärla. It was the intention of our municipality council , Eskilstuna Kommun, to get rid of some of the costs for the urban roads. This project is quite interesting since I have never been involved in such things before. There are still lots of new things to learn!
I have been the secretary of the Ärla Road Association since spring 2005 and still is.
We managed to reach an agreement with Eskilstuna Municipality for lousy maintenance of the roads during the 30 years they had the responsibility or "our roads". We were finally granted about MSEK 2.2 which we already have started to use for road repairs and new asphalt. The repairworks was started in 2008, was continued 2009 and will be finished 2010. 

I have also been commissioned during spring 2006 to do some consulting related to Embedded Software (ESW) at Volvo CE. This is largely based on the fact that I was the Project Manager for the initial ESW Project and that I'm rather alone, being a generalist rather than specialst, having the broad knowledge of all the components and applications used in the total ESW Process. During late fall 2006 I was also engaged in the initial phase of the PRIME Project, an application that will replace parts of PROST.

From beginning of January 2007 until end of 2007 I had no assignments. However, around end of 2007 I was contacted by Volvo Road Machinery with operations in Germany (Hameln), USA and India to help them out with the implementation of Embedded Software, ESW. This project is now closed since beginning of 2009 as far as I am involved.

I have also to a certain extent been communicating with universities in France and India about PDM/LCM issues.