This thesis serves to examine how manufacturing SMEs consider outsourcing. Furthermore, we aim to identify the main characteristics and patterns for these types of companies that can explain their rationale in such a decision. The chosen method for this thesis is abduction and selected research approach is multiple case studies. Seven case studies have been conducted at EAB AB, Esbe AB, Hörle Automatic AB, Pelly Industri AB, SGV Industrier AB, Swede-Wheel AB and Wulkan AB. Our findings have illustrated that although traditional outsourcing theory provides a good platform for explaining the rationale behind outsourcing decisions in SMEs, we have identified additional considerations that SMEs, operating as 2, 3 or 4-tier suppliers towards OEM-corporations, make.

The amount of information stored on the internet grows daily and naturally the requirements on the systems used to search for and analyse information increases. As a part in meeting the raised requirements this study investigates if it is possible for a automatised text analysis system to distinguish certain groups and categories of words in a text, and more specifically investigate if it is possible to distinguish words with a high information value from words with a low information value. This is important to enable optimizations of systems for global surveillance and information retrieval. The study is carried out using word spaces, which are often used in text analysis to model language. The distributional character of certain categories of words is examined by studying the intrinsic dimensionality of the space, locally around different words.

Over the past one hundred years, there has been an increasing globalization and industrialization of the food systems. As a result, the distance between the production and the consumption of food has increased, both in time and space and in the minds of people. There is also an increasing concern for the environmental effects of industrial farming and the long distance transportation of food. Sustainable agriculture and efforts to build more sustainable food systems has emerged in opposition to the global food market. The definitions of sustainability usually include environmental, social and economical aspects. To build more localized food systems is seen as one way towards increased sustainability.

This paper aims to investigate whether a small organization with small development teams can find a value in leaving a functioning development process to follow a formal systems development methodology, if these organizations can find support in an agile systems development method and in such case the method needs to be adjusted according to the organizations unique conditions.A traditional plan-driven system development methodology includes a number of phases that are carried out sequentially and a completed phase can basically not be resumed. All requirements are specified at the beginning of a project and at the end of the project only one delivery of software take place. This can cause difficulties in for example dealing with changing requirements. Agile system development methods intend to deal with changing requirements and to enable continuous delivery of valuable, working software.In this paper, both the traditional plan-driven methods and agile methods will be explained. Research methodology and existing system development theories will be discussed and a company where the study has been conducted will be presented.

Turning solar collectors, heliostats, is certainly not a new idea but has been explored for at least two decades. Projects on this subject have resulted in more or less realistic constructions, in a commercial point of view. Far too often the technical goals have had higher priority than the economical, which has resulted in a few constructions having the ability to compete with conventional, fix solar collectors. The economical issues have been given high priority in this project, without decreasing the demands on reliability. The system has been given the following mechanical and electronical properties: One-axis movement, fix heat carrying fluid system, microcomputer controlled movement and automatic protection from overheating.

This paper describes the design and implementation of an automated build system for the JAS39A simulator FUS39A at HiQ:s offices in Arboga. The assignment was to automate the process in which modules are built; the simulator is composed of a number of modules which are built manually at the end of each week, this process takes about a day of manual labor. The system can automatically build a module as either a scheduled service or by manual invocation. The system contains functionality for reporting the build results to any given recipient by e-mail. The purpose of the system is to free up the time put into manually building the modules for better suited tasks by automating the build of FUS39A.The assignment was split into two parts, an analysis part where information of the old system was gathered, tools and methods were chosen and the new system was designed.

Today there are many system development projects that break both budget and time plan. Often this depends on defects in the information systems that could have been prevented. The cost of test can in some cases be as high as 50 % of the projects total cost and it's at the same time an important part of development. Test as such has moved its focus from the software it self and its faults to a wider perspective on whole infrastructures of information systems where assure a good quality is important. Sogeti in the Netherlands have developed a test method called TMap (Test Management approach) that can be used for structured testing of information systems.

This thesis analyses the cost accounting system KPP and its use within the Swedish health care. KPP is designed to calculate and assign health care costs to individual patients. This would facilitate evaluations and comparisons of the costs for certain diagnosis, patient groups or clinics with a different mix of diagnosis. The study investigates the following questions: 1. Does the KPP-model theoretically work as a cost accounting tool for health care purposes? 2.

This thesis aim to advance the Liberal Integrovernmentalism (LIG) developed byAndrew Moravcsik in order to order to explain how the European Court of Justice (ECJ) can make de facto EU policies diverge from what was originally intended by the Member States. More specifically it describes how the Posting of Workers Directive, Directive 96/71/EC, originally was created to shield certain Member States and their respective systems of regulating the labour market from pressure arising from the posting of workers form low-wage countries inside the EU. However, through a series of cases in the ECJ the de facto policy of the directive has changed and it is now in itself a potential threat against these systems. The Member States now find themselves caught in a ?Joint-Decision Trap?, unable to rectify the situation even though their original agreement has been turned on its head.

This study was carried out in Jordan with the purpose to investigate the bacterial microflora of egg shells from cage systems and from deep litter floor systems. Another aim wasto get a general impression of the hygiene, at farm level, of egg production in Jordan andthe factors affecting it.Eggs from two cage systems and three floor systems were analyzed, regarding bacterialcontamination of the egg shells. Egg samples were taken from the storage room, the eggcradle in the cage system and from the nest and floor in the floor system. To get a generalimpression of the hygiene at the farms, swab tests and air tests were performed. Swab testswere performed with a sterile cotton swab at the same units as the eggs were sampled andair tests were performed by opening petri dishes where the hens were staying.

Today?s housing system for laying hens has limitations for the hens natural behavior. Despite the current law of prevention of cruelty to animals, this might implicate health problems for the hens. This degree project is aiming to improve the situation for laying hens in cage-systems. The aim with our project is to bring forward a draft of a cage that improves the welfare of laying hens.

The Swedish energy company Vattenfall is currently the owner of the district heatingsystems in Nyköping and Motala. To be able to also offer cooling solutions tocustomers are becoming more and more important. This report describes the resultsof an investigation of the cooling market in the two cities and the potential needs forcooling today and in the coming 20 years. The total potential for the coming 20 yearsis estimated to be roughly 17 MW for Nyköping and 9 MW for Motala.Two possible district cooling systems for each of the two city centers was modeledand a comparison was made between different cooling techniques namely absorptionand compressor chillers.Absorption chillers driven with district heating during the summer is one way ofincreasing the load in a combined heat and power plant and thereby the possibleelectricity generation. The cost of heat production must be low for absorption chillerto be able to compete as an alternative.

Today there are a big need for a system that delivers overview of all available units for different municipalities and shipping- and security companies due to the increasing requirements for efficiency. The purpose with this graduation thesis is to find out which systems that is suitable to use while developing cost-effective software for positioning and to produce a prototype for such solution.This assignment has been done at the request of PocketMobile Communications AB. PocketMobile is a company that are specialized on delivering modern mobile software solutions and systems to companies with their own vehicle fleet or mobile workers.This master thesis can be split into two separate parts, the theoretic- and the practical part.The theoretic part includes producing a number of functional requirements in cooperation with PocketMobile and comparing the available systems against the function requirements.The practical part deal with the development of a prototype that demonstrates the software recommended. The development tools that best matched the functionality requirements when the selection was made in May 2007 were Map24 and OpenLayers. The system that was selected to use while developing the prototype was Map24, because this product matches all of the requirements and it is also suited for professional usage regarding support, scalability and reliability.

In today?s industry it is starting to get more and more interesting with wireless systems and solutions for applications. To be able to reduce the amount of cables drawn to various machines which takes both space and an extra fee for every cable drawn. Some systems might require the user to use a handheld device that is directly connected by a cable which in some machines might be inelegant for the user.The goal with this bachelor thesis is to develop wireless monitoring of the machine operators position that is working with heavy industrial machinery. The thesis started out with researching different techniques for positioning a transmitter indoors, this was done in order to get a better understanding on how to go about.

Huvudsyftet med det här examensarbetet är att se om det finns ett skäl eller behov att skapa ett serviceföretag inom IT och finna affärsmodeller för detta företag. Vidare avses utvärdera dagslägets hantering av IT hos små till medelstora företag. IT har blivit viktigt för företagsverksamheten men kan lätt försummas i mindre och medelstora företag Vi vill genom en marknadsundersökning se om det finns ett behov av ett serviceföretag. Därtill genom en undersökning av existerande teknologi och öppen mjukvara utvärdera om ett serviceföretag kan skapas för hantering av IT hos dessa företag. I vår undersökning fann vi vissa företag som är intresserade av vår lösning och vi fick svar på en del av våra frågor om hur situationen ser ut för företag inom Gävleborgsområdet.