Benchmarking is an established method of working which is often used in order to develop the quality of the organization. However, almost 70% of the organizations with benchmarking fail due to the lack of planning and structuring of the benchmarking exercise. Maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry are one of those who have decided to conduct benchmarking. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to gain knowledge of how the maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry deliberately structure and plan to use benchmarking as a driving force for quality development in the maintenance sections.The study is a hermeneutic case study. Telephone interviews and document analysis have been used as data acquisition methods.The results show that there is a lack of both planning and structuring in the benchmarking process, and lack of management commitment for quality improvements within industrial maintenance.

Background: The global responsibility for multinational companies is a current matter of subject. Now when the world increasingly is getting globalized, economic growth is created, which brings a bigger demand of responsibility on companies. The leading companies from every industry is often becoming the frame for how the production process works and is therefore exposed to outer pressure which, for example, is coming from consumers and the media. Since consumers at present are more aware of what they are buying and where it comes from, it is important that the companies take social responsibility. We have therefore studied three big companies within the clothing industry to see in witch way they are taking their social responsibility.Purpose: Our purpose was to explore how companies within the clothing industry describe their work with Corporate Social Responsibility, code of conducts and where the incentive behind this work is coming from.Method: We have, through a qualitative study, examined how three large companies work with Corporate Social Responsibility.

Tourism is often being viewed as one of the worlds largest sectors and a great contribution to growth and development. There is a large motivation amongst developing countries to promote themselves as a tourist destination, since they expect the tourism to generate economic growth. The government of Thailand has been promoting tourism since 1960, and the number of foreign visitors has increased from 100 000 back then to 13.5 million in 2006. The purpose of this paper was to investigate weather the increasing tourism industry in Thailand has pulled resources away from other sectors of the economy towards the tourism sector, and in that way harming Thailand?s international competitiveness and causing deindustrialization.

Problem: Small companies dominate the skin care industry, and they also face moredifficulties, constraints and resistance in strategy implementation and sustainabilitywork than other operators. Still, the trend of sustainability strategies increasesignificantly precisely in this industry.Purpose: The purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge to the field ofsustainability strategies and motives for the implementation of them in smallercompanies who engage with skin care, in Sweden.Framing of a question: Why do some smaller Swedish companies in the skin careindustry choose to implement sustainability strategies in their business?Literature: The literature functions as a framework for the study and is considered toidentify the possible reasons why small companies choose to implement sustainabilitystrategies or not. The literature is collected before the empirical data.Method: This paper is constructed by a qualitative method approach. The empiricaldata were collected through interviews, by telephone, personal meetings and email,which were then transcribed and the interpreted by a model, which the authors havecreated.Conclusion: Smaller companies are often met by larger resistance and an until up tothe present slowly emerging industry with vague rules and controls as well as ancomparative knowledge of what is good and what is not.

Apple has since their launch of the Iphone series created a billion dollar business with the market place Appstore. Third-party apps have disrupted the mobile industry, attracted a high number of developers and set the standard for the industry. Despite success, this market has yet not been the topic of any academic study, a fact that makes this thesis important. Under the assumption that apps can be regarded as a service, traditional service marketing theories have been applied with the research goal to map existing business models, evaluate revenue potential and understand best practices of marketing techniques. A series of qualitative interviews with representatives from the difference business models, backed by secondary data describing the domain shows how the Appstore has evolved over time and which marketing practices that appear successful.

The banking industry is a fundamental part of the economy in Sweden. Despite its importance, the competition and the concentration level within the Swedish banking sector is relatively unexplored. This paper aims to examine the development of the concentration level in the Swedish banking sector during a period of ten years, 2003 to 2013. The examined banks in the study are the four largest banks in Sweden; Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB and Swedbank, and four selected niche banks, ICA banken, Ikano Bank, Länförsäkringar Bank and Skandiabanken. In order to examine the development in percentage change, there are six selected variables; loans, deposits and borrowings (both public and households), net interest income and return on equity, which are observed during a period of ten years.

Sustainability reports are drawn up for the company's stakeholders and declare the company?s corporate social responsibility. Consumers are one of the companies' most important stakeholders for food companies. This study is aimed to describe how consumers perceive sustainability reporting in the food industry and if the application level of the GRI framework has an impact on how consumers perceive sustainability reports. Consumer perception is described in the GRI principles and the basis is the ICA and Coop's sustainability reports, which are two of Sweden's largest food company.

Since the Bruntlandreport was published 1987, companies have shown their environmental commitment through an environmental account. Companies started these accounts because their rivals started having them and today most large companies have a environmental account or sustainable development report. The information given by the companies have been seen as slanted, and others see it only as a part of the image production for the companies. There have been several investigations of the stakeholders of environmental reports and it is not clear who is the primary stakeholder, in other words who actually reads them. All different stakeholders have different views of what an environmental account should encompass.

Background:Life-cycle costing (LCC) is an investment calculation that takes intoaccount operating costs throughout the investee lifecycle. LCC calculations are mainly usedto evaluate investments that have no revenue side. Attempts to apply the LCC calculations forbuilding-related investments have occurred since the 1980s. Despite the advantages ofusing LCC calculations, use has not passed through in full. The main obstacles have beenidentified as a lack of relevant input data, and insufficient experience of workingwith LCC calculations.

AbstractThe development of Corporate Social Responsibility has been increasing for the last decade.Not only is Corporate Social Responsibility an important thing for big rich companies, todayit includes all different kinds of companies? regardless size, profit or industry. An industrywhich affects the majority of the society is the grocery industry. People have on a daily basissome kind of relationship to the grocery industry, which means that we have high presure onthe companies to not take an over price on the goods, to have a good assortment and that thecompanies take responsibility for the society. With high pressure from different groups of thesociety it is hard for the companies to know how to please all groups at their highest level.In this essay a qualitative examination will be done of how grocery companies mange theproblems of having many stakeholders to please.

This degree project has been carried out in cooperation with Gedevelop in Helsingborg.Gedevelop has developed a camera that can calculate the weight of a liquid glass mass.Because of the density and viscosity changes in the glass, the weight information issometimes incorrect given. Glass industry is today addressing the problem by an operatorperforming a manual weighing of a few bottles which, in turn, calibrates the camera system.The project aimed to develop an automated system to control the weighing of glass bottles forglass industries. This system must be so flexible that it can be easily mounted on plants withdifferent production equipment around the world.The project includes design and construction of equipment that meets the requirementsformulated together with Gedevelop. Work has been done both in Halmstad and Helsingborgand has included both calculations and review of the theory to understand the forces thatinfluence the design of different construction parts. A prototype was produced that meets theoperating requirements for the design and can be used in testing features.

In Sweden, the labour movement historically had influenced both society and politics. In recent times, it is considered a change in society with a stronger employer party while the unions weakened by reduced unionisation. This study aims to highlight the presence of individualistic and collectivistic approaches to the labour market in relation to union density. The different approaches are investigated in the labour market by means of a quantitative survey. The study's survey items are workers in the timber industry.

This paper is based on a literature review and interviews made with managers in small-scale nurseries for pot plant production. The review helped to identify the worst occupational hazards in pot plant production. The interviews provided a way to investigate how the nurseries act so as to avoid the worst hazards and what they do to even out work intensive periods during the season in order to get a more even distribution of work over the year. According to available statistics problems with back and shoulders are the most common of the physical disorders and the risk for occupational accidents are high for greenhouse workers. Most of the occupational injuries are connected to musculoskeletal problems. The handling of material is often manual and involves frequent lifting and carrying of heavy loads, the strenuous work postures and static muscular tensions these repetitive tasks are associated with causes straining and overloading.

Lean Production is used by many manufacturing companies. Companies in process industries do not use Lean Production to the same extent today. This is part of the report's issue to explore how Lean Production can be applied to a company in the process industries.The investigated company is a processing company that manufactures various types of foil. The company wishes to streamline its production and has therefore asked the authors to examine if Lean Production can offer the company improvements in their production. Lean Production value stream mapping tool has been selected to identify and analyze the current state of two of its products in production.

Background:Life-cycle costing (LCC) is an investment calculation that takes intoaccount operating costs throughout the investee lifecycle. LCC calculations are mainly usedto evaluate investments that have no revenue side. Attempts to apply the LCC calculations forbuilding-related investments have occurred since the 1980s. Despite the advantages ofusing LCC calculations, use has not passed through in full. The main obstacles have beenidentified as a lack of relevant input data, and insufficient experience of workingwith LCC calculations.