The market is developing and a growing competition increases pressure on companies to maintain their competitive advantage. Working with cost savings is a way to enhance earnings in a short term but also in a longer perspective. Volvo Powertrain Production Köping has an overall goal; to reduce costs by nine percentages in three years. To achieve the goal, Volvo Powertrain Production Köping works with World Class Manufacturing where the Department of Processing Technology constitutes an important part.Volvo Powertrain Production Köping lacks a standard for how savings within the metal cutting tool area are to be calculated. This makes it difficult to control and monitor their business outcome but it also causes difficulties in controlling the tool suppliers? outcome.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how investments are justified in the Swedish data center industry, with a focus on cooling equipment. This is achieved through semi-structured interviews with 20 different interviewees. These interviewees represent different facets of the industry and facilitate an understanding of which factors, such as: investment costs, operating costs, reliability, environmental impact and the influence of external and internal actors, come into play and to which degree they impact the investment decision-making process. The results show that primarily low operating cost in the form of low energy consumption is the driving factor when it comes to the procurement of new equipment. A lower environmental impact is a positive side-effect of lower energy consumption.

This study investigates how nutrients from source-separated human urine from Gothenburg properties can be used as fertiliser in agriculture or for parks or sports fields. The initiator is the Department of Sustainable Water and Waste Management at the City of Gothenburg. Today urine-diverting systems are installed in two apartment buildings and two public-use buildings. Urine recycling is expected to lead to less exploitation of natural resources and less eutrophicating discharges into water recipients. In the study the urine?s market potential is investigated, for which practical handling issues, business aspects and acceptance of customers, employees and visitors have proved to be important.

As a result of increased energy prices more and more energy-efficient homes are coveted. An energy-efficient alternative is passive houses, which is characterized by an extremely well insulated building envelope that recovers the heat without the use of radiators or under floor heating. But a passive house requires a higher investment cost than a conventional building project, since it will require more construction materials, training of construction workers, greater land area, and long construction period. But the lower operating cost expects to pay back the higher cost of investment. We therefore question how profitable a passive house is in relation to houses built according to modern conventional building techniques.The aim of our study is to investigate the viability of passive houses compared to convent­ional houses.

In this thesis you will be able tofollow the design work of a drumtest. A tool that by having a rotatingdrum with equally positioned obstacleswill simulate the conditions a mountainbike rim will pass through.Initially there is a specification ofsome parameters and requirements thatthe design had to fulfill. There is alsosome brief background information aboutwhy a drum test is required for abicycle rim manufacturers and about thecompany Innolite Design AB that thisthesis is done for. After that itfollows an extract from conceptgeneration with the chosen concepts andsolutions but also some of the conceptsthat were not chosen.The thesis also contain a part where thereader cangain a deeper understanding of how thedesign works as well as some moredetailed facts about how the choice ofmaterials, their thicknesses, etc. havebeen made.

The producers of grain in Sweden are facing a rough future. The competition is getting harder all the time, in Sweden, in EU and also from the ?world market?. The producers have to be more efficient and have to have bigger units. Many producers might have to look for new alternative production opportunities.

A today common soil reinforcement method is the installation of lime-cement columns. Lime-cement columns have been used since the 1970?s and have been a useful method for stabilizing soil at great depths. It is mostly used for stabilizing road and railway embankments because the method is economically viable and the columns are easy to install. The total costs for the installation of the lime-cement columns is dependent on the numbers of installed columns, what percentage of lime and cement that has been used and the pattern in which the columns has been installed.

In this degree project we wanted to investigate if there are any possibilities to get a higher income from grain growing by giving the grain to hens instead of selling it. We were also wondering if the manure has any value or if it only cost the egg producer money. If the egg producer cultivate his own grain and is able to store it in layer is there quite much money to earn. Expensive pasture makes it profitability to pay up to 1,35 Swedish crowns for a kilo of wheat. In our calculating we?ve used calculation from the company Lantmännen.

The purpose with this essay is to enlighten the small business´ existence at times of expansion, identify threats and possibilities and also to try to find ways to encourage growth in the small business.To answer our purpose we carried out a literature study to later implement six interviews with small business leaders. We separated the companies into three categories; small business without employees, small business with 2-5 employees and small business with 6-10 employees.We confirm that the main reason why small business leaders think both once and twice before hireing new labour force are because of the high costs. The change in government has so far not given the small business what was promised, but there is still hope for improvement and simplification.The economic part of owning a company has been pointed out as the greatest threat in relation with expansion and the big responsibility in another persons possibilities to earn his/her living is also burdensome. The possibility to take on more work increases with the number of workers, which is positive..

Because society?s demand for quality, efficiency at low cost is constantly increasing, companies are increasingly choosing to invest new methods to achieve these points. Those who manage to find ways to improve their processes are often the companies that have the greatest chance of becoming a winning player in the market. BIM is a new method that can reduce the internal costs while increasing communications between different parties. However there is disagreement about what BIM is and its purpose.

The competition for Norway spruce pulp wood in Central Sweden increases, forcing the supply-structure of Holmen to face two important challenges. Firstly, it is of the outmost strategically importance to secure the long-term supply of Norway spruce pulp wood to the industries. Secondly, Holmen desires to increase the obtainable volume of Norway spruce pulp wood. This would enable the company to choose volumes in the lower price-segments and thereby decrease the dependency of costly marginal volumes. As this work shows, one part in managing these challenges could be to lower the quality standards concerning root rot (Heterobasidium annosum). Facts presented in the work shows that: 1. Technically, the TMP-industry of Braviken can handle a much more rotted pulp wood than that used today, although the cost of refinement increases.

Because of increasing demand of power on Malmbanan the capacity of the existing wires which supply the trains must be increased. This increases the stress on the existing poles and for this reason the system for supplying the loads along the railway is to be removed from the poles and be replaced by some other system. This thesis is a study on a two-level low voltage (1 kV and 0.4 kV) electrical system with the aim to investigate if it can be an alternative to the system used today taking into account the voltages, fault currents and costs.In this thesis the following tasks have been performed:? Gathering of data? Description of basic theory? Loadow and fault current calculations of the system with MATLAB? Life Cycle Cost estimate of the system? Analysis and conclusions from the resultsThe results show that the new system can be an alternative to replace today's system. The simulations and calculations show that the voltage drop is at an acceptable level and that the fault currents are large enough to supply a safe disconnection if a fault occurs at the far end of the system..

In this thesis you will be able tofollow the design work of a drumtest. A tool that by having a rotatingdrum with equally positioned obstacleswill simulate the conditions a mountainbike rim will pass through.Initially there is a specification ofsome parameters and requirements thatthe design had to fulfill. There is alsosome brief background information aboutwhy a drum test is required for abicycle rim manufacturers and about thecompany Innolite Design AB that thisthesis is done for. After that itfollows an extract from conceptgeneration with the chosen concepts andsolutions but also some of the conceptsthat were not chosen.The thesis also contain a part where thereader cangain a deeper understanding of how thedesign works as well as some moredetailed facts about how the choice ofmaterials, their thicknesses, etc. havebeen made.

We would like to learn more about how the restrictive policy against incentive programmes affects the board?s of Swedish state owned commercial firms ability to govern management in an efficient way. We also want to find out if there are different consequences in reference to this that are not directly linked to corporate governance issues. Our empiric observations have been made in order to profoundly explore the subject and examine it through the eyes of professional individuals, all expressing different views and standpoints. We conclude that the most efficient structure is when an active board is complemented by a well structured and individualised incentive programme.

The dissertation deals with an account of actual problem, which can arise within EMC and power quality. The cause of power interruption and what can be done to minimise the power interruption is discussed. It also includes a definition of planning levels and which factors one needs to have control over to carry out a possible planning strategy and how the local distributions net could be more secure. The electrical net could be secure but no system can be free from interruption.The dissertation examines two distribution transformers: GLA40T1 (Glansås) and T399 in Tranås Energy which don?t have regulators.