In this paper we investigate 67 Swedish buyouts in the manufacturing and retailing sector between the years 2004-2012. The purpose is to measure changes in a set of financial key ratios to see if private equity firms are able to improve performance in their portfolio companies compared to a peer group consisting of other firms within the same industries. Furthermore, we examine if there is a difference in the change of the financial key ratios between private equity-owned firms in the two sectors. The key results are that the private equity owned firms have not outperformed their peers with respect to the chosen key ratios. We also conclude that there is no significant difference in the change of the financial key ratios between private equity-owned firms in the two sectors..

The traditional view of maintenance is machine-based, where acute maintenance tasks are highly valued. Preventive maintenance is viewed as secondary and less desirable to work with. The more modern view is to regard maintenance as a process. The machine-driven tasks are still necessary but are viewed as a part of the big picture.The purpose of this study is to examine how to high light general difficulties concerning maintenance management to aid organizations to reflecting upon their own situation. The study is based upon a pilot study initiated by ProcessIT concerning relevant key figures in maintenance.

Problem: How is Lean, a production-focused model being applied to non-productive focused industries.Purpose: To examine how Lean has been applied to the department of Turbuhaler-Kvalitetskontroll and which parts have been successfully applied.Problem statement: How does the implementation of Lean?s basic concept, which originated in the car industry, differentiate itself from the implementation of Lean in the pharmaceutical industry, in this case the department of Turbuhaler-Kvalitetskontroll at AstraZeneca.Conclusions: The department has had success in its implementation of lean. They have developed and modified the basic concept in order to apply it and excluded the parts they did not consider necessary. Through their work they have accomplished numerous improvements in, among other things, the reduction of lead time. .

Induction motors, often referred to as the workhorse of the industry, play an important role in production today. Therefore, it's important to diagnose any faulty induction motor prior to failure to avoid costly and time consuming production stops.This thesis compares methods for diagnosing induction motors in operation, MCSA, Park's vector approach and the standard method used by Swedish industries today. By simulating broken rotor bars and short-circuit in one of the windings, each method is tested and the results are compared using matlab.The results need further verification due to uncertainties of the condition of the test motor, even though the experiment gives a hint of the different advantages of each method. A combination of the methods should be able to tell if the motor needs further examination..

AbstractOutsourcing is a business strategy that has developed over the last 40 years. Outsourcing means to let another company do some activity within the company, for example production.The thesis for this paper is: How is outsourcing used in a manufacturing company today and how is the resource efficiency affected by it? The research is divided into two parts, a theoretical part and an empirical part. The theoretical part consists of a study of literature. The works in this study is books, text books, bachelor thesis paper and scientific articles.

The purpose of this study is to extend the understanding of how professionals in modern organisations want to be managed. We especially investigate professionals changing industries to describe if, and how, aprofessional in this situation is becoming a professional again after the change. This to find connections between intrinsic motivation and attitudes towards professionalism on one side, and applicable managerial methodson the other. Best practice in managing professionals is traditionally considered to be non-invasive methodologies such as indoctrination and training. Beyond that, operational-level management is usually considered to be bound to fail.The analysis suggests the following:? A professional changing industry will become professional again.? The driving force for becoming professional again is the strive for horisontal specialization, induced by higher education.? Management of professionals needs to account for the integrity of the horizontal specialization of the professional.

This study focuses the development on the protection of landscapes with old industries and how it nowadays is appreciated by the inhabitants. The overall aim of this study is to increase the knowledge about how the so called industrial landscape in Norrköping became a cultural heritage that the citizens want to protect. The study also aims to investigate the citizens´ knowledge about the industrial landscape in Norrköping, and what value they think that the place possesses. Data was collected by an information research and six qualitative interviews. The interviews where analysed by qualitative methods techniques.

Outsourcing is today a common phenomenon among businesses in most industries. The term outsourcing means transferring the responsibility of performing a certain function to an external supplier. There are usually certain methods to investigate the effects and the outcome of a function that is performed by the company itself. When this function is performed by an external party, the complexity of the function will increase.This leads us to our purpose: Based on different theories clarify how a company ensures a desired effect out of marketing when this function is outsourced to a certain retail- and advertising agency.In this essay we have defined us to study one of Sweden´s leading mobile operators who have outsourced their sales management to a retail- and advertising agency. To get an additional point of view, we have included one of the mobile operator´s intermediates, which is a selling agent whose sales function is led by the retail- and advertising agency..

The Swedish carrot market is dominated by a few big companies and three of them stands for 50 % of the market. During the last twenty years the number of growers has decreased, the area and the harvest have increased. The big producers have invested in advanced and expensive postharvest equipment that fulfils the high standards of the food industry. Few carrot producers are members of an organisation and they keep contacts with there buyers one by one. The buyers are mostly wholesalers and these have during a long period of time decreased the number of suppliers.

The purpose of our essay is to develop an understanding and an insight for the fashion industry. We want to examine what the creative industries can learn from the unique position that fashion hold in a field between commercialization and art. We used a theoretical ground to enlarge our understanding for the distinctive place that fashion holds. To gain further insight in the fashion industry we complete the theory with empirical facts. The empirical facts were collected through a qualitative method with deep-going interviews.

Surface lift adapted for today?s user Today?s T-bar lift looks almost the same as when it was launched in 1938, even though a lot has happened in the ski and mountain industries. New equipment has developed without any major adjustment to the lift. Snowboard, sit ski and downhill biking are just some examples of the evolution that demands new seating positions. It?s also very common for families to spend their holidays in the mountains nowadays.

The construction industry is currently receiving much criticism for inefficiency and slow development while demands for reduced built in moisture and efficiency increases. This report examines whether the use of field factories can meet these requirements and what factors that will be critical for future use of field factories. Industrialized construction with field factory is compared with traditional loose timber construction and industrial construction in the fields of execution, logistics and working environment. The aim of this report is to provide a basis for field factories current and future use and development. To achieve the aim of the report, people with experience in the use of the various methods was interviewed and literature studies in the various fields done.

This study aims to build a deeper understanding of how differences in identities and communication can affect the possibilities of achieving a successful merger between companies from different type of industries. Our study is of qualitative nature and looks into the specific merger between Företagshälsovården AB and Managementkonsulterna AB. The study builds upon 16 semi structured interviews which are carried out with employees from both parts of the organization and with management personnel. Firstly our study shows that the different identities existing within the different parts of the organization, highly affect the integration process after a merger. Secondly we show that the level of communication transmitted from the management, but also between the different parts of the organization, affects the possibilities of creating a successful merger.

At the time of the study, there is no law to prevent an employer from doing criminal background checks. Employers for School and childcare have to do criminal background checks before hiring but the background checks have increased significantly in other industries as well. The aim of this thesis is to analyze and explain what interest employers may have in jobseekers history and how it can affect people?s privacy. To do this I have used right dogmatic approach combined with four interviews with different employers to get their perspective on the subject.

This thesis examines how knowledge management professionals use trust as a component in the creation of knowledge management systems, and what methods they use for building trust.Adopting a grounded theory approach, interviews with 8 knowledge management professionals active in different industries served as the base for an analysis that identified trust to be the single most important common factor in the data. The concept of trust used by the informants was identified as relating to the knowledge management system itself, rather than other users, employees or groups in an organisation.Building trust, the KM-professionals mainly focused on three methods: simple solutions, system superiority, and implementation security. Using these methods, the KM-professionals seek to ensure system trust by creating opportunities for users to obtain positive experiences of using the system, and thereby generate a foundation for a trust-based relationship between the user and the system..