The manufacturing industry is currently in a short-term downturn while the competition is increasing. The result of this is that companies must find new ways to bring out their products. Traditional competitive strategies, such as low pricing, is not sufficient today as the customer is inquiring something more than just a good product. Higher demands are presented on an accurate, well functional, communication between customer and companies, as this has become an important strategic factor in achieving long-term profitability.The aim of this independent project was to analyze and evaluate the communication process between a company and its sales companies.In order to illustrate this process, a case study was carried out at Alfa Laval, their sales companies and employees at their distribution center in Tumba. In order to see the differences in attitudes between the management, the sales companies and the employees regarding communication and involvement a gap analysis were used.The theoretical part of the study considers theories about business mission, communication, involvement, quality and creating value.The result showed that a smaller gap exists between the sales companies and the management while a slightly larger one exists between the employees and the management.

The company Bergteamet, Boliden, Sweden, is installing ventilation shafts of the Garpenberg mine. For such work a platform is needed which you can stand on and work from. The Shaft Reinforcement Team at Bergteamet performs the installation work and is the sponsor of the platform. The project described in this report is performed at the department MEC, Mining Equipment Construction, which has been given the task to design and construct the platform, customized for the current shaft. After this the platform is manufactured and inspected at the workshop at Bergteamet.The design work was carried out as follows:- After an initial meeting a requirement specification was worked out, describing the problem and previous experiences of platforms and requirements for the design and equipment.- A concept sketch was developed with consideration of surrounding factors.- A constructed 3D model was presented along with the choice of materials.

AbstractThis master thesis was performed at Scania transmission department in Södertälje, where the manufacturing of gears is done. Today a large amount of manual handling is performed between the machining and the hardening process. Most of the manual handling is done at the heat treatment department. The purpose of this master thesis is to give a suggestion on how to reduce or eliminate the manual handling at the heat treatment department. The possibility to use the same packaging throughout the processes will also be investigated.

The production of cheese is in continuous development with objectives to in-crease productivity, achieve changes in shelf life and functional properties of the products. One concept in the development is to substitute milk fat with vegetable fats and oils in the manufacture of cheese. The objective of this study was to investigate effects on cheese yield and cheese quality of 4 different semi-hard analogue cheese products produced by substituting milk fat with vegetable fat, each analogue cheese with a specific mixture of vegeta-ble fat. As reference a cheese produced with anhydrous milk fat was used. The yield and recovery of fat and protein were determined by recording the weights of each cheese direct after press and after 20±2 days of storage and analysis of the composition of the cheeses after 20±2 days of storage. The cheese was fur-ther subjected for texture profile analysis in a TA-XT Plus Texture Analyser and analysed with Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) to examine whether the fat behaves similar in the cheese as in pure form in respect to its thermal properties. The cheese yield was not significantly different when using different fats. Differ-ent amounts of water were absorbed during the water cooling.

The company Olofsfors AB manufactures drive belts for forest machinery, known as ECO-Tracks, and abrasion-resistant steel and cutting edges for graders, excavators and tractors, known as Bruxite and SharqEdges. Manufacturing these products requires the steel to be heated and molded, then submerged in water and hardened. The water used in the hardening of steel is pumped to the process from pits below the floor and then pumped back to the pit after it?s been used. Since the temperature of this water rises after being used to harden the steel the temperature of the pumping pit needs to be adjusted to maintain its setpoint of 21°C.

In the light of ever increasing international trade around the globe, affecting men and women in all countries, it is surprising that so little attention is given its gender effects. The effects of trade are said to be gender neutral, but could potentially act reinforcing on the existing gender patterns in a society. The aim of this thesis is to examine whether the implications for men and women in relation to trade liberalization can be found to differ. By stylizing some differences between men and women, this is done by examining the theoretical implications mainly via the Heckscher-Ohlin model and through a Beckerian approach. The implications found are then compared with the findings in existing empirical work.

Dimensional stability is an important aspect of fuel mechanical design and licensing of new fuel designs for nuclear power plants. Dimensional changes within the reactor can affect the safety margins against overheating of the cladding and the pellets, therefore it is crucial that the dimensional changes are kept to a minimum.The profits per produced kiloWatt hour continue to decrease for the Swedish nuclear power plants. Some reactors are even operated with a calculated loss. To reduce fuel costs and thereby improve the profit some reactors are operated with higher uranium enrichment, so that the assemblies can reach a higher average burnup. This increases the neutron fluence to the pellets, cladding an spacers.

The purpose of this Bachelor degree project is to design different types of services that can increase the amount of re-used timber within the building sector and by that means improve their environmental efforts. By examining how the sectors environmental work concerning recycling and re-using timber as a building material is getting on at present, conclusions have been drawn about what further could be done for improvement.The project has shown that there is a scarcity of information and statistics within the sector, but that there are efforts in progress to change this. Questionnaires have been sent to a number of companies working with demolition and utilizing re-usable materials in order to find out what kind of problems there are within the trade. Unfortunately the survey gave insufficient result due to the low reply frequency.It is obvious that active environmental work within the building sector is important and the knowledge acquired while working with the project has led to the design of three suggestions for services regarded as being of interest for improving the negative environmental impact caused by the sector:Suggestion 1 ? Sale of construction parts prior to the demolition of a buildingSuggestion 2 ? Re-utilization circulation when manufacturing buildingsSuggestion 3 ? Education in relation to the purchase of houses  The positive and negative qualities of the suggestions have been examined with SWOT-analysis and further adaptions and the results have been interpreted.

ProblemThe manufacturing industry is a mature industry where the profit margins are small and the competition is hard. This makes it hard for both manufacturers and resellers to gain market shares and reach reasonable profit margins only by selling products. Therefore Swecon who is reseller for Volvo Construction Equipment tries to find alternative methods and ways to increase their profit. An alternative source of income could be to develop the range of services that are connected to the ground products.PurposeThe purpose of the thesis is to examine how Swecon in southern Sweden can improve their offers of existing services connected to the ground product and investigate the demand of new such services.MethodThis study is based on a qualitative study of five of Swecons local offices and five of Swecons customers. The empirical framework is mostly based on personal interviews but in some cases information was retrieved by using phone interviews.

Möjligheternas värld är en utställning som ska presenteras på olika mässor. Hjärtat i utställningen är automationsfabriken som är en automatiserad anläggning som ska tillverka leksaksbilar. Automationsfabriken ska invigas på mässan Scanautomatic och ProcessTeknikden 9-11 oktober 2012. Då möjligheternas värld är ett samarbete mellan näringsliv och skola bidrar företag och skolor med hjälp och samarbetar för att projektet ska bli lyckat. Prevas del i projektet är att ta fram ett styrsystem i form av ett MES och SCADA system till fabriken samtatt göra hemsidan där bilar kan beställas och integrera den med styrsystemet.Målet med examensarbetet är att utveckla styrsystemet och ta fram ett HMI genom att använda programvaror från Wonderware.

Atlas Copco Tools is a world leading company in tool manufacturing. The productionin Tierp works hard to improve their assembly to maintain its position. This thesis isa part of their improvement efforts to be a more Lean production.The main focus for this thesis was to identify the material flow in the kanban system,which used to supply the assembly groups, focusing on the material flow to assemblygroup 9 and the assembly group 3. Group 3's material flow within the kanban systemwas perceived to perform better than the group 9. The handling of kanban materialand their working methods in the two groups was identify those differences whichaffected the kanban system.As an alternative material supply a study were done in kiting.

Construction companies in Sweden have for recent years seen an increase in the numbers ofwarranty complaints associated with the market of resident buildings and the cost for this hasbeen measured to over 1.2 billion SEK per year. Working with poor quality cost as a way ofcreating insight about defects within the company?s processes is a method developed and usedby the manufacturing industry for decades, but have not yet reached the construction industry.This study has been performed in collaboration with a Swedish construction company, wherethe author has been stationed at the aftersales division for residential buildings. Owing tocircumstances, this published report has been made anonymous regarding the company whowill further on be namedthe Company. The Company is aware that warranty claims producegreat costs and has requested a way of putting cost and cause to specific claims in order ofreceiving a more specific cost view and to make the reuse of knowledge more efficient.

AbstractThis master thesis was performed at Scania transmission department in Södertälje, where the manufacturing of gears is done. Today a large amount of manual handling is performed between the machining and the hardening process. Most of the manual handling is done at the heat treatment department. The purpose of this master thesis is to give a suggestion on how to reduce or eliminate the manual handling at the heat treatment department. The possibility to use the same packaging throughout the processes will also be investigated.

SAAB Automobile ABis a car manufacturer within General Motors corporate group. SAABAutomobile ABhas a big part of the responsibility for the brake development in the corporategroup. The car industry is facing harder environmental requirements, which influence the brakedevelopment. The focus is to develop brakes with low drag and sustained brake feeling andperformance. Important characters for the brake caliper are high stiffness and low weight, highstiffness results in high performance and low weight is important because it is unsprung mass.This thesis investigates the possibility to improve the performance of the brake caliper for aGMproject.

Demand has become increasingly difficult to forecast in today?s volatile markets. Being able to produce towards real demand is becoming vital for companies, since inventories of finished goods are expensive to maintain and because miscalculated products tie up capital that in the end is never repaid. More and more companies are using postponement strategies to delay the process of producing until real demand has become known. Tooling Support Halmstad is a company within the manufacturing industry, which has become aware of the benefits with postponement strategies for parts of their production.