Problem discussion: Long-term supplier relationships have become more common. Hence, supplier evaluation is a critical activity for many companies. However, making a relevant supplier evaluation is time consuming. Therefore, it is important to decide which of the suppliers to put an extra effort on. Should all suppliers be evaluated in the same way? Previous, focus has been on purchasing of direct material.

The purpose of this study was to develop two types of prediction models for Scots Pine and Norway Spruce. The first type for calculation of the stump diameter under bark the year the tree reached breast height (Dstubh130). The second type for calculation of the annual difference, e.g. the number of growth years between stump height (0.2 m) and breast height (1.3 meters above ground level). The primary thought with these prediction models is to obtain the breast height age in the trees on basis of the number of annual rings at stump.

In modern dairy production the milking frequency is increased in some herds due to introducing of automatic milking systems or the farmers decision to milk high producing dairy cows more than two times a day. With more frequent milkings the milk yield increases while the content of fat and protein decreases. However, how the composition of protein is influenced is not fully evaluated. The purpose of this study was therefore to see if a higher milking frequency had any impact on the milk production and especially on the protein composition. This study was conducted as a half udder experiment.

The City of Gothenburg has an urgent need to upgrade its public transport. The capacity of its light rail transit (LRT) has reached maximum capacity within the inner city limits years ago. The construction of an underground metro will be very expensive and time consuming due to the soft clay beneath the city. The apparent need of developing another type of mass rapid transit (MRT) is urgent. An elevated metro have turned out to be a success in Greater Vancouver, but is it possible for the system to operate well in Gothenburg with its narrow streets and current land use; will its route coexist with the current LRT or will the noise disturb people too much?.

Ever since Internet revolutionized the world, e-stores and e-commerce has grown into becoming a natural part of consumer's everyday life. Much thanks to it's facilitative and time saving characteristics. Online, consumers are provided with a huge assortment and the opportunity to shop any time they like. Yet, the absolute greatness of e-stores is the possibility to push prices below the physical store price, which seems to be most appreciated to a large extent by consumers worldwide. The fact that e-store sales in Sweden grew 14% last year verifies this.As more players step into the virtual world of e-commerce the competition gets tougher.

As a result of globalization, multinational teams are being more frequently used in today´s businesses. This specific type of team can be described as heterogeneous when it comes to nationality and linguistics. The aim of this study was to explore the concept of multinational teams. This was made using culture as a main concept, and nationality, linguistics, and organizational culture in order to describe it. We intended to say something about how this type of team´s efficiency; when it comes to satisfaction and performance; was affected by national and linguistic heterogeneity within the team.

Due to recent legal enactments regarding carbon dioxide emissions, the car industry is facing higher demands. An effective way of reducing these emissions is to minimize the weight of the vehicle. This thesis constitutes a feasibility study on whether or not it is applicable for the car industry to utilize an inner floor structure comprising composite materials. The principal was the projectSåNätt, in which the main participant was Volvo Cars Corp. In consultation with a reference group, consisting of delegates from the industry and KTH, a specification of requirements was produced.

This literature study summarizes the signals dogs use in intraspecific communication. The purpose is to clarify the way dogs communicate so that situations where their intentions are misjudged can be avoided. The signals are divided into olfactory, visual, auditory and tactile and every section starts with a short anatomic and physiologic description of the sense organ that is used to register the current signal type. The interspecific communication between dog and human regarding its development and function is brought up. To end with suggestions are given of how veterinary technicians in clinics can make use of knowledge about the way dogs communicate.

The purpose of this study was to gain greater knowledge of how preschool teachers and children using an experimental- and activity box in biology. To find this out, I have used the participant observation method and semi-structured interviews since my study is qualitative. The result of the work led to a greater understanding of the biologybox. It was shown that preschool teachers' involvement is very important for children and that the biologybox contained good and inspiring materials. Although educators desired that there was more material to choose from as well as the usage time of the biologybox should be longer than 3 weeks..

Retrospective data from two stud farms, in this study named stud farm A and B, including 742 mares, was statistically analysed. Parameters included in the analysis were type of insemination, date of the first insemination, number of inseminations, the age of the mares, if the mares had a foal or not, foaling date, result of pregnancy examination (if it was done), twin pregnancy and treatments given to the mares. The pregnancy results and the treatments where compiled into a number of frequency tables in which the mares where arranged according to age, month of first insemination, foal or not and type of insemination. There was a significant difference in pregnancy result between the years at both stud farms (2001 better than 2002). At stud farm A, in year 2001, month (at start of insemination) significantly influenced the pregnancy result.

Students at the School of Engineering at Jönköping University have on behalf of the swimming organization ?Nässjö Sim och Livräddningssällskap? conducted research on how to monitor and evaluate swimmers and swimming groups in a simple and efficient manner with a focus on usability and user friendliness. Since no system existed that could meet these requirements, the client had a desire to tailor and develop such a system. The purpose of this work was to develop a system that would work as a tool to be used by coaches and swimmers alike and allow them to eventually follow the development of swimmers and swimming groups. The organization also wanted to have the ability to create tests and exams, both for land and water training, register these in the system and in a structured way know which swimmers took and passed these.For this thesis, the following questions functioned as a framework for progress.UsabilityHow to design a usable system and what is required?SystemWhat type of system is best suited to meet the client's requirements and preferences?Competition resultsHow can one retrieve all the competition results for swimmers of Nässjö SLS?DatabaseWhat type of database is best suited to easily share data with an external existing database?Usability has been the main focus throughout the project.

This thesis has treated a three-axis robot which task is to serve a larger test machine tomove the modules to be tested, from the storage to the test site. The robot is composed ofthree linear actuators; two standard components of ball screw type and a custom-builtactuator of trapezoidal type. The work has mainly focused on the custom-built device to seeif it could be replaced with a standard component. Part of the work has been to look into thepicking tool and to see if there are any possibilities to improve its function.The report presents two different proposals which I decided to call Robot 1 and Robot 2 andthey aim to address the problems arising in the purpose-built linear unit and the X-axislinearity problems. Robot 1 focuses on eliminating the problems that arise around therobot's X-axis, with such simple means as possible and without making excessive materialchanges.

Value stream mapping is a tool that is frequently used by many different companies. It is a great tool used to achieve the work that follows the theories of lean production. The tool is used, however, only frequent on the factory floor and the method is also designed based on this type of use.An interest of applying the method on administrative parts of the company has occurred lately. Administrative parts of the company refers to the part that does all the planning such as purchasing, receiving orders, customer contact, contact with factory floor and other work that is made around the actual manufacturing. But the knowledge about applying value stream mapping on the planning part of the company is lacking because the method is relatively new.In this work, a comparison is made between the introduction of value stream analysis on production and planning.

What is a city? What do we mean when we describe something as urban? In what way should we build the city so that we can achieve a good environment for our own generation and for generations to come? These questions are constantly of interest and they are frequently discussed. It is also important to have considered these questions when working with city-planning. This essay contains a description of and reflections about the recurrent questions in today?s debate about the city and city-planning.

Intermodulated force microscope (ImAFM) is a type of dynamic AFM. ImAFM opens up possibilities for mapping the topography and making quantitative determinations of material parameters at the same time. With increased information the need to generate more informative images of the sample emerges. In this Bachelor's degree project I have created tools for rendering images of a sample. The topography is plotted as the height and a material parameter is color coded on topography.