Value stream mapping is a tool that is frequently used by many different companies. It is a great tool used to achieve the work that follows the theories of lean production. The tool is used, however, only frequent on the factory floor and the method is also designed based on this type of use.An interest of applying the method on administrative parts of the company has occurred lately. Administrative parts of the company refers to the part that does all the planning such as purchasing, receiving orders, customer contact, contact with factory floor and other work that is made around the actual manufacturing. But the knowledge about applying value stream mapping on the planning part of the company is lacking because the method is relatively new.In this work, a comparison is made between the introduction of value stream analysis on production and planning.

In recent years, many efforts on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferations have been made by non-nuclear states and civil society. The dissatisfaction has motivated non-governmental organizations to pursue a ?humanitarian initiative? based on international conferences aimed at highlighting the humanitarian consequences of certain arms and nuclear weapons. This study examines the five key roles, according to Rapport et al. (2012), that civil society organizations have played in the establishment of arms control conventions, more specifically the Mine Ban Treaty, also called Ottawa Convention, and the Cluster Munition Convention.

This study sets out to research the effects of perceptions regarding teacher education as well as the teacher profession in general amongst college students studying to become teachers. The aim of the study is to get a better understanding in what perceptions that constitutes the foundation of the aspects that may affect the students of education by interviewing students about how they perceive their education. The study relies on a sociocultural perspective to analyze the data as well as justify the relevance of the study. The method for researching this will consist mainly of interviews and literature studies. Four students of education, where two are Swedish and two are Finnish, will act as the main source of empiric information.

The ambition with this study is to look into and create an understanding for how an intranet can work as a support system in work processes in capacity as a source of knowledge. We want to enhance the understanding for which kind of knowledge that can be coded in and transmitted by an intranet, and which that is lost in this process. We also want to clarify what it takes to get this knowledge, in collaboration with the intranet, to support the work in an organization. It is a qualitative case study at a Swedish bank. It consisted of semi standardized, half structured interviews with five people in one of the bank?s local offices.

The purpose of this study was to identify reading strategies used by high school students when reading textbooks and school-related material. Any differences in reading strategies between Biology and English were also of importance. A study sample of 62 students from three different high schools in Sweden participated in the study and were asked to fill out a survey questionnaire. Eight students from this sample were also interviewed. The findings of this study show that students use a number of different reading strategies of which metacognitive and sociocultural factors play a crucial part.

This thesis studies private equity firms' implementation of management control systems in their portfolio companies and whether the systems are affected by cross-national differences. A Comparative case study examines five different private equity firms to derive if there are any differences between the private equity firms' management control systems in the United States, Europe and China. The empirical observations are categorized according to the framework developed by Merchant (1985) and further developed by Merchant and Van der Stede (2003). Theory on the effect of multinationality on management control systems, also developed by Merchant and Van der Stede (2003), are used to explain possible findings. The applied theory includes the cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede (1984) and Hofstede and Bond (1988).

This Master thesis studies how a diversified institutional care organisation can optimise its collective knowledge resources so to manage and distribute this knowledge to different parts of the organisation with help of the organisations intranet. The purpose of the study is to examine if knowledge management and the organisations intranet can be used to create, store, transfer and better use the knowledge within the organisation. Through a case study the thesis will look at different knowledge processes and their relation to the organisations intranet. The case study includes a questionnaire for the whole organisation and qualitative interviews with seven persons from different levels of the organisation. The theoretical framework of the study approaches knowledge management and intranet through four knowledge processes.

The purpose of this study is to understand the factors that are affecting students at the Technology and Electricity- and energy programs in their choice of studies and vocation. The study is a Comparative case study and quantitative method has been used in the form of questionnaires. The result shows that students do not like to be affected by another person but believes that they themselves have made their choice. Interest turns out to be the biggest influence factor of choice for both students at the Technology and Electricity- and energy program. For Electricity- and energy students have also access to work had some impact.The parents' education level was higher for Technician students and their parents worked with occupations requiring university degrees.

The purpose of this examination work was to make a general description about drying and storage of grain, and a case study with a comparison between brought and home-made feed. The case study was made on the farm Solhem in Hörby, a farm that produces 3870 pigs for slaughter a year. In this project three alternatives have been compared, 1st alternative: own produced grain approx. 400 ton + wet grain 415 ton purchased during fall, 2nd alternative: own produced grain approx. 400 ton + dry grain 415 ton purchased during winter, 3rd alternative: bought feed 815 ton purchased continuously during the year. Considering the price information provided to me the 1st alternative gave the cheapest feed..

The aim of this study is to make a comparative study between the grievances during the Dacke Warand the German Peasant´s War. These two conflicts may have occurred separately, regarding bothgeographical and chronological distances but also share common issues for this comparative study.Less than two decades separates these two conflicts and they were all by their own serious insurrectionsduring their time. While the German Peasant´s War was the greatest uprising in Europe up tothe French Revolution, the Dacke War was the biggest Peasant Rebellion in Scandinavian history.While the German Peasant War has been studied and researched by historians for a relative longtime, the Dacke War has been neglected in research history. If it were not for the Swedish professorLars-Olof Larsson?s studies during foremost in the 1960s, the Dacke War would have been a historicallyuncharted territory of research indeed.

AbstractPurpose ? The purpose of this study is to examine the challenges that exist within thematerial handling process, to and from a department for service and maintenance at a hospital, and how the challenges can be managed to achieve a more efficient material handling process. In order to fulfill the purpose the following two questions where formulated:1. What challenges exist within the material handling process, to and from adepartment for service and maintenance at a hospital?2.

The objective of this thesis was to investigate factors that influence local government implementation. The study is a Comparative case study between two local governments in Sweden; Hässleholm and Landskrona. Primarily the thesis aimed to look at the conditions faced by those implementing a new government directive aimed at supporting women who face violence, and their children who bear witness, by focusing on three key aspects for successful implementation: Implementers level of understanding, knowledge and will to implement decisions. Material in the form of documents and 14 interviews with key actors in the two authorities constitute the empirical foundation of the analysis. According to the results, are the two local governments pretty equal in achieving their projectgoal but the local government of Hässleholm had better policy-making, policy-design and policy process.

The purpose with this work is to investigate the cost to produce piglet in a case study company. The starting point is going to be the agriwise (www.agriwise.org) calculation which I am going to change and adapt to the case study company. To day the pig market is bad but we have probably reached the bottom. The market has started to rise. It is no business to produce piglets today.

In the growing concern for the state of the environment more tools are being integrated in the decision-making processes. Sweden actively makes use of environmental impact assessment (EIA), which is supposed to minimise negative impacts of a project, policy or plans on the environment. The EIA process in Sweden still requires certain improvements to be more efficient. In this study actor interaction was analysed with trust being the framework for analysis. The aim is to find out whether it is possible to use trust as a framework for analysis since trust research is very discipline dependent.

The aim of this study is to examine the investment decision process for investments that arise due to strategic changes and are of strategic importance to the company. At the foundation of this study is the previous research in this area, done by King (1975) and Bower (1970), which examines the investment process on a more generic level. At the core is the investment decision process pertaining to Projekt X, an investment performed by NordiCorp. Having conducted a case study including six interviews with employees from various parts of the organization, combined with a large number of internal documents, the process regarding the investment decision was carefully illuminated. The results show that in many regards, this process follows the more generic investment process.