One of Sweden?s sixteen national environmental objectives strives to decrease the impact on the climate. By 2020, green house gas emissions should be 40 % less compared to the levels of 1990 and a minimum of 50 % of the energy consumption should come from renewable energy sources. Because of this there is a great need of increasing the production of renewable energy. This is where biogas comes in as a competitive alternative.

Background: Mass customization has been identified as a competitive business strategy by both companies and academics because of its ability to incorporate the voice of the customer into companies? products and services. Although mass customization may sound appealing, the strategic concept is still developing and firms adopting this business strategy face several challenges. Production concerns are of high relevance since mass customization implies a high level of customer involvement in the product design. Since the areas are closely linked it is reasonable to ask how a mass customization strategy affects production concerns.

A growing need to strengthen ones position on the market, even as a city in competition with other cities, has resulted in an increasing number of municipalities developing brand platforms. When the city of Umeå developed their platform, they identified decision makers and investors as one of four important target groups.The aim of this study is to explore the portrayed image of the city of Umeå in two Swedish trade journals which addresses the specific target group decition makers and investors in both public and private sector. The aim is also to compare the image of Umeå in the two papers, to the ambition of the municipality, expressed in the brand platform.In order to make the observations as firmly established as possible, the method of the study is a combination of a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative text analysis. The study draws on the theories of Eli Avraham and Philip Kotler, concerning how to improve city images and how to market a specific city among others. The study shows that the city of Umeå in large extent is portrayed in accordance to the ambition which the municipality expressed in the brand platform.Umeå is displayed as an expanding city.

This thesis is divided into two parts. Part one contains a general description of the flexographic printingtechnique. Part two contains a more detailed investigation in the areas substrate, inktransfer and trends, which are only briefly commented in part one, and conclusions and comments.The major problem concerning substrate is washboard. This phenomena can be limited if one can control and minimize the amount of glue applied in the single- and double facer, use high surface weight on liner, use low surfaceweight on fluting and control the humidity during the conditioning of the corrugated board. Corrugated board with a smooth surface radically increases the quality in print.

AbstractBachelor Thesis, School of Economics at Vaxjo universityProgram: Enterprising and Business Development, EBD 362, Spring 2006Authors: Jens Asp, Vivianne Holmer, Carl-Marcus WahlstromExaminer: Stig G JohanssonKeywords: Services, cooperation, collaboration, customer offer, knowledgeTitle: Service firms in collaboration ? A study of the development of small service firms in collaborationNutek presented numbers during year 2005 witched show that the Swedish service sector, for the first time ever, was greater than the industrial sector. The kind of firms that develop most is small service firms without employees. The topic of interest in this bachelor thesis is to study how this kind of firms can develop. There is a great number of strategic options for firms to choose.

An increasing number of automotive supplier companies are investing in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in order to gain cost advantages. This has happened in a rapid pace since many of these countries did not have any foreign direct investments (FDI) at the turn of the century. The problem now is for how long these countries will be able to maintain the low costs. One purpose was to create a model of country advantages for automotive supplier companies when relocating further production to CEE. This dissertation was written in cooperation with the Trelleborg Group.

Jällaskolans upper secondary School is situated on a big farm just outside Uppsala. The School is focused on agriculture, forestry, gardening, animal care and science. Jällaskolans staff has whished for a school garden for educational purpose where students can practice their gardening skills and learn more about plants. But most important, a specially adapted outside environment such as a garden, would be a great advantage for the students with special needs. This garden could even be an asset for other visiting school classes in the region.

In this paper the effect of capital structure on profitability has been investigated among Swedish companies. The essay intends to examine how the relationship between debt and profitability appear among Swedish companies and if the relationship differs between industries. The purpose is to find out how debt affects the profitability of Swedish companies.A quantitative approach has been applied. The selection was made among companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, which resulted in a sample of 207 companies. Several regression analyzes has been formed, based on the independent variable debt-ratio and the dependent variables profit margin, pre-tax profit margin, operating margin, return on assets and return on equity.

The bioenergy market has been introduced relatively late in a perspective of the Swedish forestry. Nowadays branches and tops are used more frequently as bioenergy after harvesting. Therefore, it has developed a competitive situation between pulpwood and bioenergy. This situation has even established some questions. Two examples of these are: ? At what top diameter should the final piece of pulpwood be crosscut to get the best economically result? ? Should the top diameter, at the final piece of pulpwood, be crosscut at a thicker or smaller diameter than what is done today? The purpose of this report is to answer these two questions when the harvesting is made motor manually in beech stands.

The purpose of the thesis has been to explore the use of hedge fund styles when constructing portfolios of hedge funds (i.e. funds of hedge funds). The central question is if the use of hedge fund styles can significantly explain and improve risk adjusted returns (characterized by Sharpe ratios). The study has been done in collaboration with Optimized Portfolio Management AB who desire further knowledge and evaluation of hedge fund styles for their fund of hedge funds.To be able to create successful ex ante portfolios we have explored various prediction models for both risk and return. Our findings indicate that return prediction is problematic using simple models such as regression since the risk exposure of the indices appear to change significantly over time.

This thesis has been performed at International Aluminum Casting AB in Eskilstuna,Sweden.International Aluminum Casting is currently working with a number of improvementsin their production in order to achieve their vision of being the leading aluminum foundry in Sweden. As a step in their improvement efforts, focus was directed ondeveloping the company's fixtures for machining.Efforts were focused on two main objectives: to develop a complete proposal on afixture which leads to a more rational use of an assigned part and also form general design advice for development of fixtures in the future.During the work progress, discussions have been made with experts at International Aluminum Casting within the field of fixture design. The objective was to obtain sufficient knowledge about the underlying problems with the current fixture for the part. At this stage of the thesis, a number of essential criteria for fixture design were produced. Information and inspiration were obtained by examining the company?s currently developed fixtures.After gathering the necessary information the process of developing three different fixture concepts started.

China has the world?s largest population and during the last thirty years the country has implemented political and economical changes that have affected China to move towards a more western market economic direction. At first this development was going slow but during the last five years it has increased which today has made China the world?s greatest growing economy. China?s improved cooperation with the world is one reason for this growth which has led to a cumulative of the consumer market.

There is an uncertainty in the market for grain forcing the meat/milk producers to review alternative feeds to a larger extent, in order to get control over the feed costs. This has led to that the meat/milk producers need to have a good knowledge regarding how the different feeds influences the animals and which technical equipment to use for handling. For those that produce their own feedmix, there is a need to put interest in new crops and their characteristics to be able to get the knowledge of what is required for their own production. It is beneficial to keep an open dialogue with advisors to be updated in new crops and new technology for feeding. When mixing feed at farm level, the legislation is not very clear since it the target group is large scale mixing plants. We have brought up the most important rules and regulations from the EU parliament Council as well as the ones from the Swedish Board of Agriculture (SJV), regarding feed mixing on farm and factory level. We have studied beans and pea at two different moisture levels, in order to evaluate how the moisture level affects the distribution of particles when milling with a plaitmill and a hammermill.

The market for biofuels from the forests have had a positive development and the job initiators for this master´s thesis wanted to examine the profitability of a method for harvesting forest fuel, which was unfamiliar to them. The method was the ?long tree tops-method?, here called the LT-method. The LT-method is characterised by the fact that timber is harvested as the only roundwood assortment while the rest of the stem, which in other cases would become pulpwood, is harvested as forest fuel together with the logging residues. The method is based on the assumption that advantages in handling of the forest fuel assortment such as increased load weights for forest hauling and truck transportation, should compensate for the lower price for pulpwood when sold as forest fuel. The aim of the study was to compare the profitability of the LT-method with the GROT-method (harvest of timber, pulpwood and logging residues) and conventional logging without any harvest of forest fuel, and aslo to try to identify factors affecting the profitability of the different methods.

Background: As Porter?s diamond (1990) suggested, the business environment highly influences firms? strategies. Today, most of the companies have to decide their strategy depending from a worldwide business environment. Yet, strategy researches and the growing importance of marketing for business success also show that customer dimension must be taken into consideration. On some markets and in certain industries, the offer is much higher than the demand and then, companies need to attract customers.