The high level of competition and the rapidly growing technology development has created new challenges for today's businesses where they are forced to deliver more customized products at a lower price and a shorter time period. This places high demands on the companies' ability to design and develop better products in a more efficient way. In addition to developing products, the design process focuses on securing long-term success for the company by developing nourishing skills. However, to achieve an effective design process the companies must improve their ability to plan as well as use their knowledge base in a more efficient manner. Toyota's product development system is a critical component for companies to address challenges that they?re facing and offers a great potential to create significant competitive advantages.

During the last decade working with competence has emerged as a more strategically important area. Today the human resources in a company are considered a competitive advance and the HR-units play a significant role when it comes to HR-management. Different motives for investing in strategies that promote competence development and learning also exist. The purpose of this paper was to examine how the process of competence development was managed at a large global company. The empirical material consisted of four persons who were interviewed and the analysis of the material was inspired by grounded theory.From the analysis four major themes or core factors emerged as central to the interviewed persons' understanding of the competence development process; solid preparatory work in relation to competence development, communication, awareness of responsibilities and finally the taking action and evaluation of the action.

This MA thesis analyzes how the protagonists and the narrative structure relates to ?the Child? as a linguistic/cultural construction in Mare Kandre?s early authorship (1984-1991). A thematic of children portraits defines this period of Kandre?s writing, which consits of the following works: In a Different Country (1984), The Annunciation (1986), Bübin?s Kid (1987), The Burning Tree (1988) and Aliide, Aliide (1991).Linguistic components, such as the word ?child?, the name ?Kid? and a reconstruction of the concept of childhood, holds an actuate position in these narratives when they first appear in direct relation to the protagonists. This suggests how generally accepted categories and concepts consciously are at work in Kandre?s writings.

Abstract Title: Enabling Smart Research and Development through Knowledge Conversation Seminar date: 2005-06-08 Course: Master thesis in business administration, 10 Swedish credits (15 ECTS) Authors: Andreas Johnsson, Johan Rosendahl Advisors: Lars Bengtsson Key words: Knowledge management, Knowledge conversation, Research and development, Ba, Trelleborg Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to create a model that shows how knowledge management aimed at research and development processes can be used and how the theoretical fields can be connected. Methodology: The thesis is based on abductive perspective where empirical and theoretical material has been mixed to create a foundation for the analysis. Theoretical perspectives: Theories concerning knowledge management and research and development have primarily been used. These have been complemented with material about team structures and incentive systems. Empirical foundation: The empirical material is based on semi structured, mostly qualitative interviews and strictly quantitative inquiries performed at Industrial Hose within the Trelleborg group.

Background and Problem discussion: Strategic evaluations are important as they providecrucial information regarding Swedish development assistance and recommendations on howto face problems and inadequacies found in the evaluations. Therefore, the follow up ofrecommendations is of great significance as well. Unfortunately, SIDA?s ManagementResponse system for follow-up of strategic evaluations has not been functioning in asatisfying way and needed actions have not been taken. Thus, Swedish developmentassistance has been criticised for the lack of implemented actions and the public has startedto question the work carried through by the organisations.

AbstractThe project "Sound and Play" have been implemented in collaboration with the toy company BRIO in Malmo. The purpose of the project was to examine whether and how BRIO in the future could develop toys around sound for Toddlers.The problem formulations that would be answered after completion of the project was "How could BRIO broaden its product range with the help of audio toys?", "How can you combine toys and sounds in an interesting way for children?", "How do you create a toy with sound that is fun for the child, but not annoying for parents?". Currently BRIO only has two toys with sound in this age group.The expression of the toy was going to be a mix of classic and cool and the overall feeling of the toy was going to be explorative and arouse curiosity in the child. This feeling would be communicated through simplicity and joy.

Changes in the climate and the environment are largely consequences of human influences. Resources are given to teach adults about the environment. However, there are problems in focusing on adults because it is difficult to influence people when they already have created a lifestyle. We have instead chosen to focus on teaching children about changes in the climate and the consequences of this.Many of the toys available on the market today encourage children to consume. Luxury cars and dolls with hundreds of accessories are often made of materials that has have a negative effect on the environment.Another problem we often encountered during the year is the declining interest in technology and science.

The vision of this thesis was to create a concept that can be used as a base for amachine construction. The purpose of this project was to use different methods todevelop a concept that on the best way meets the sat up requirements. This projecthas been divided into three stages/parts; principle, primary and the final solutionstage.This thesis has been conducted in collaboration with Västkustägg AB. It is aconstruction project designed to construct a machine that will automatically putlabels on the egg packages. Västkust AB wanted to automate this process.

AbstractThe development of new economies from the industrial revolution to the information society of today has led to an increase in goods, services and information technology. It has also affected the way that organizations are formed and shown that organizations transform more and more into networks. This has left an impact on the concept of marketing and an increase in the handling of internal relations within companies. The marketing concept has developed from the 4P:s, price, place, product and promotion, to relations marketing as a new perspective.This study focuses on a description of relations marketing in medium - sized advertising agencies. The advertising business has a long history of close customer relations and advertising agencies strongly depend on new customers.

The purpose of this Master Thesis is to analyze what suitable hardware platforms there are on the market in order to build a low price control and information system for mobile applications, called small display module. The thesis will be underlying material for making a decision for further development. The result of the thesis consists mainly of a Windows CE kernel and a schematic for a CPU card, on which it would be suitable to build the display module. Another major part of the report is the introduction of different techniques that could be of interest when designing a processor based system. The processor architecture that was chosen is the x86.

Background and Problem discussion: Strategic evaluations are important as they providecrucial information regarding Swedish development assistance and recommendations on howto face problems and inadequacies found in the evaluations. Therefore, the follow up ofrecommendations is of great significance as well. Unfortunately, SIDA?s ManagementResponse system for follow-up of strategic evaluations has not been functioning in asatisfying way and needed actions have not been taken. Thus, Swedish developmentassistance has been criticised for the lack of implemented actions and the public has startedto question the work carried through by the organisations.

Process standardization is a topic that has generated a lot of research and literature. At first, the focus was on production; today processes are used in all different kind of business areas.The aim of this study has been to analyze how processes can be applied on development businesses and how IT systems affect the result of the process. To accomplish this, we have asked questions such as what standardization is in a development process? Why are the processes standardized? What difficulties can appear with standardization? And how the IT-systems affect the result of the process?To answer these questions, we have preformed a case study on Saab. Saab is a well know Swedish company who are working with a project called the GMS-project, where they develop processes to cover the whole company´s business areas.The literature gives the reader an understanding of processes and standardization.

Small!size!enterprises!within!the!outdoor!industry!seldom!use!a!structured!process!or!method!when!involving!users!in!product!development.!One!reason!for!this!is!that!many!structured!development!processes!are!designed!for!large!companies!with!very!different!resources.!When!involving!users!in!product!development!processes,!the!most!common!user! is! an! elite! athlete.! She! or! he! often! has! different! requirements! than! the! regular!consumer!and!in!the!customers?!point!of!view;!this!leads!to!nonCmaximized!developed!products.!!The! result! of! this! thesis! is! a! user! involvement! process! for! small! outdoor! companies!based! on! the! Sister! Kenny! Research! Center! Innovation! Handbook,! a! product!development!process,!which!itself!is!based!on!a!phaseCgate!model.!The!process!focuses!on!the!user!category!enthusiastic!amateurs,!since!this!is!what!companies!in!the!industry!require.!The!process!also! focuses!on!how!and!where! small!outdoor! companies! should!involve!users!and!give!recommendations!on!how!many!users!that!should!be!involved!in!a! product! development! process,! different! from! what! the! theory! recommend.! The!process! also! builds! on! that! ideas! should! come! from! the! users! first,! and! then! being!further!developed!by!the!company's!product!developers.!The!degree!of!communication!between!users!and!the!company!is!shown!and!the!report!clarifies!the!user!involvement!intensity!in!product!development!processes.!!The!involvement!process!that!has!been!developed!has!also!been!summarized!in!a!guide!that! can!be!used!by! a! company!on! a!daily!basis.!This! contains! information!on,! among!other!things,!how!users!are!selected!and!how!to!plan!a!workshop.!!! !.

This master?s thesis will examine the concept of ?fixed establishment? in VAT-law. The concept can be found in the new EC-directive on the common system of value added tax, however it has existed for thirty years in previous directives. Despite this, the legislator has never provided a proper definition of the concept. Its meaning has therefore evolved through the case-law of the ECJ.The Court has put forward a number of criteria which are all to be met if a fixed establishment is to be at hand.

This thesis was performed at Indusec ABin Stockholm. Indusec AB is a companythat develops security solutions.Together with the Police of Sweden theyhave gotten the assignment to develop anapplication based on one of theiralready existing product Inferno soundbarrier. This application is supposed tobe mounted on a ballistic shield thatthe police use, the application consistsof a speaker box (the sound barrier) anda trigger with wire. The trigger withwire is the part that will be addressedin this thesis. The application willthen be used as a tool to surprise atarget at various skirmishes.The project consists of three majorphases, pre-study, concept generationand modeling.