The working capital describes the short-term financial position and focus on cash flow and the actual inflow and outflow of money in the company. Working capital is part of the company's financing and consists of the company's current assets and current liabilities. There are resources that are used in the daily activity and can be optimized. The more effective they are in circulation, the higher value they create. The control of working capital is called Working Capital Management and has its basis in the company?s Working Capital Policy.

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.

This report deals with an exam report written by Olle Hjalmarsson and Thomas Likar, students at Högskolan i Halmstad. The project was carried out for Haldex Traction AB in Landskrona whose business consist of manufacturing automatic all wheel drive systems (AWD-system). These systems consist of a plate clutch which activates all four wheels of a 4-wheel driven vehicle. An important component in these clutches is the accumulator which basically consists of a piston under the load of a spring which creates an oil pressure with the help of an electric motor used for actuating the clutch.At Haldex difficulties has been experienced regarding the assembly of the accumulator parts due to the small tolerances between the piston and the hole of the accumulator in the cast aluminium housing. Attempts have been made to assemble the parts in existing robot cells.

For a long time Lean has been a well-known concept among manufacturers. Theinterest of understanding Lean and the ability to implement it is common amongcompanies. The concept of Lean, used in the right way, can help companies to reducetheir lead times, their complexity and increase the efficiency of the working processes(Hyer och Wemmerlöv, 2002). Unfortunately the work towards increased efficiencyhas primarily been focused on manufacturing and plant work, resulting in that Leanhas been adjusted to these areas. The conclusion of this is that companies don´tprioritize to improve processes such as administrative ones.

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 world gets smaller and smaller and goods, services, people and information are nowadays more and more able to freely cross borders. Half of the Swedish GNP consists of export and almost 70 % of that amount is goods. Because of today?s increasing globalization the Swedish companies are now faced with both new opportunities and threats. Companies with goods which are manufactured in Sweden gets challenged by increased competition from cheap goods produced in other countries and companies can no longer afford to entirely focus on the domestic market.

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.

Abstract: Title: Communication of and around internal performance reports - A study in seven manufacturing companies based in Blekinge. Authors: Marcus Harrysson and Mikael Johansson. Supervisors: Lars Svensson and Carina Svensson, Blekinge Institute of Technology Department: Department of Business Administration. Course: Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, 10 credits Purpose: Our purpose with the bachelor thesis was to investigate if there is a connection between communication of and around internal performance reports and profitability in companies. Method: Our investigation has been made at seven companies in the county of Blekinge by making personal interviews with people in both production and business departments at each of the companies.

Metso Paper offers a front-running range of solutions and services for the pulp and paper industry. At the baling unit, design solutions are developed for manufacturing and handling of pulp bales. The machines are continuously developed to satisfy customer needs. One big step in the development of the baling line was to remove hydraulics from the machines and replace it with electrical motors and pneumatics. This was not done on the folding machine which is still driven by mainly hydraulics.

This report describes the results of the project "Concept development of jet engine inspection plugs" carried out in the spring of 2008. The work was done at the department of product definition at the company Volvo Aero in Trollhättan. The objective of the work was to develop concepts for a "Volvo-unique" inspection plug. The work is part of Volvo Aero's focus on proprietary (self-developed) technologies. Inspection plugs can be found on virtually all aircraft engines and gas turbines.

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.