Forecasting is an important part in attempting to predict how companies will perform in the future. The more accurate the prediction, the more valuable are the results obtained from the forecast. This thesis aims to investigate forecasts of return on equity, and whether a disaggregation of the leverage formula into its underlying components affects the forecasting ability positively. This is conducted by comparing a model based on the leverage formula's components with a model solely based on return on equity from previous years. The study includes manufacturing companies on the Swedish Stock Exchange over the period 1998-2011.

This thesis report describes the development of concepts regarding how weight can be reduced to the analytical instrument Biacore 4000. This thesis has resulted in five different concept proposals, all of which is solutions to reduce the instrument's weight.The thesis started with a pre-study where the instrument's structure and function were studied using both Solid Works, the opportunity to study the instrument in real life were also possible done. During this phase, a weight study was conducted as well, in which the instrument's weight distribution was studied and mapped.Following the initial phase, the work proceeded by developing concrete concepts to reduce the weight of the instrument where focus mainly was on the two cabinets. In addition, another two concepts were revealed, both with a more general approach.At the final phase of the thesis, the concepts were compiled and evaluated among themselves and the initial instrument.The thesis resulted in a study of the instrument's structure and weight distribution, with suggestions on how weight may be reduced for the instrument.The result factors such as materials, and manufacturing were aspects that were taken into consideration.At the final section of the report, suggestions for further work in which different aspects are discussed can be found..

The work was carried out on Termisk Systemteknisk?s office in Linköping. The aim was to create a computer system with infrared camera technology for quality control and temperature monitoring of manufacturing processes in industry. The system should be configurable such that it can be used on several different issues, including those where the real-time analysis of camera images is required.The developed system is based on an existing framework, Panola, to deal with measurement results and images in a database. The framework is built for the system continually check for new data , and the task was to create a foundation upon which to build systems that use the framework, but fully or partially utilize direct calls .

Ecolean Development AB are developing and manufacturing filling machines for pasteurized liquid food products. Because of lack of any appropriate supplier of box closer which seals boxes with small flaps, they have decided to start a project to develop a prototype of a box closer. Due to long experience from industrial automation I have been given a chance to develop control system for a box closer. Degree thesis involves electric design in ELPROCAD ic PRO and programming of PLC (programmable logic controller) and HMI (Human Machine Interface). The report describes degree project from the project plan phase via the development phase to the conclusions.

Värmekollektor in Sunne is a company whose main occupation is to collect the gas produced inlandfills. The gas contains about 50 % of Methane which is a greenhouse gas 20 times worse than CO2and should therefore not be allowed to leak into the atmosphere. The Methane is in as large amount aspossible used in different plants for example heating of households. But there are occasions when aflare is needed to burn the excess gas at standstills or testing of new landfills. The Flare only burns themethane to reduce the hazarder?s effect of the environment, it does not take advantage of the energy inthe gasThe goal of this master thesis was for me to create a foundation for an in-house production offlares for Värmekollektor.

Nanotechnology, one of the most interesting sciences today will no doubt have an enourmous impact on tomorrow's society and industry. One of the most interesting nanomaterial that has been discovered is the semiconductor quantum dot (QD). This material shows interesting novel properties such as a size-dependent band gap, which is an effect caused by the quantum confinement effect in all three dimensions. Due to this phenomenon the absorption spectrum can be tuned to the desired value by adjusting the size of the QD.This thesis aims to investigate how the solvent ratio of H2O/Ethanol affects the optical and structural properties of copper sulfide QDs manufactured in a chemical synthesis way using modern microwave heating. The process of manufacturing QDs using chemical synthesis often involve a capping-agent to prevent the QDs from agglomerate into bigger structures.

The goal with this master thesis has been to evaluate and to examine the stationary resistance bridge. The resistance bridge uses a 4-point measuring to determinate the resistance, which is used in the manufacturing of the conductor. It is then used when the resistance is to be decided for coarser aluminium conductors. A conductor has to fulfil certain demands to be able to move forward in the process. One of these demands is the resistance in ohm/km, which has demands that the measure values of the resistance bridge are as true and precise as possible.

This thesis is the result of the author?s interest in music and electronics, namely the design and manufacturing of a stereo sound system with an active crossover. In short it can be stated that an active crossover has many advantages over its traditional passive counterpart. The active design naturally results in a more complex system comprised of a multiple number of components. This report deals with the theoretical aspects of preamplifiers, crossovers and power amplifiers as well as power supply and control.

The goal with this master thesis has been to evaluate and to examine the stationary resistance bridge. The resistance bridge uses a 4-point measuring to determinate the resistance, which is used in the manufacturing of the conductor. It is then used when the resistance is to be decided for coarser aluminium conductors. A conductor has to fulfil certain demands to be able to move forward in the process. One of these demands is the resistance in ohm/km, which has demands that the measure values of the resistance bridge are as true and precise as possible. The stationary resistance bridge had been examined through various kinds of measurements to be able to see how stable the system is and how to obtain a measure value as optimized as possible.

The last few decades the development in the field of electronics has been huge. The components performance gets better at the same time as the manufacturing cost decreases. Many of the design moments that have to be done, are done automatically today, but it can get better. Especially for analog circuit design.At Electronic System in Linköpings universitet, research is in progress to develop a tool that can design analog circuits in reasonable time. It means that it has to size the components (transistors, resistances, capacitances etc), so that the circuit can fulfill the performance requirements.

Milk fat is an important feature in many different milk products and other foodstuffs and it is often crucial for the dairy plants that the milk fat is stable for different manufacturing processes. Lipolysis is the enzymatic degradation of fat and is the one of the causes for an elevated amount of free fatty acids (FFA) in milk. Further, the change in fatty acid (FA) composition in milk can affect the stability of the product and also the manufacturing process. Both internal and external factors, at farm level or at the dairy plants can affect both FA composition and content of FFA. Milking frequency (MF=number of milkings per cow and day) and the composition of feed are two examples of factors generally performed at farm level. The objective of the present study was to evaluate how FA composition of milk and amount of FFA are influenced by two different ingredients supplemented to concentrate.

Examensarbetet berör utvärdering och förbättring av kvalitetssystem vid Pfizer i Helsingborg. Data har samlats in, analyserats och därefter har förbättringsförslag tagits fram. Huvuddelen av datainsamlingen består av intervjuer som sedan analyserats med hjälp av teori inom TQM och gällande ISO standard. Övriga delar av datainsamlingen består bland annat av benchmarking. Svagheter med systemet har identifierat och rör bland annat, avsaknad av helhetsbild, kontrollinriktat samt suboptimeringar.

Lean is a production philosophy which is about increased resource use while meeting customer requirements. The foundation of lean comes from Toyota and their production philosophy The Toyota Way. Professor Jeffrey k. Liker has worked with Toyota's production philosophy and Lean for a long time and has created a 4 P model and 14 principles that characterize the Toyota production system (TPS), which many sources refer to.The aim of my work is to study the working procedure of asphalt projects from sales to the laid asphalt with a focus on planning and production management. The goal is to examine how the lean philosophy can be applied in planning and production to simplify the flow of asphalt projects based on Likers model and principles.

ABB Motors and Generators manufacture large AC machines with oil lubricated plainbearings. The machines have occasional problems with oil leakage from the bearings. aproblem that ABB wants to be solved.In this thesis the cause of this leakage were investigated, with focus on the bearingseals.The purpose of this work was also to suggest amndments for preventing thisproblem. , and to suggest improvements that can prevent this. The first step was todo a literature survey of earlier work on this problem, study the theory ofhydrodynamic bearings and different types of seals and their properties.

Highland Group AB was helping a customer of theirs to create an All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV), a project Highland has never been involved with before. For the wishbone arms of the wheel suspension, traditional manufacturing methods and tubes with cylindrical or square shaped cross section was preferred. We performed a simulation where the ATV was driving on a bumpy road too see the forces involved. With the results we proceeded to calculate the strength of the concepts to find out which is best suited for the tough environment in which the ATV is used. The concept that turned out to be the best was a wishbone made of circular cross section, which had good structural strength and did fulfill the demands that we required for the construction.