This report describes the bachelor degree project called ?A case study in strategic product design in collaboration with Elfa? carried out by Mathieu Gustafsson and Pär Rickberg,students at Carl Malmsten Furniture Studies.We had the opportunity to do our degree project in collaboration with ELFA after a previous school project where we made suggestions for new products. Initially the brief was to develop new products for the company which was based on previous proposals.Reasoning led us in to design strategies and how to use such a strategy to develop newproducts for ELFA. During our first superficial analysis of ELFA and its current products, we found that we wanted to recast the framework of identity and context in which the product would be created. According to the researches made by SVID (The Swedish Industrial Design Foundation),companies that continually are working with design strategies strengthens the brand, its competitiveness and become more innovative.

The spread of digital photography has created major changes in the previously stable Swedish photofinishing market. We investigate how companies act to survive in the face of technological change, through our research question: What strategies have actors in the photofinishing business chosen during the changeover from analog to digital photofinishing? Using a deductive method, we have conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 actors in the photofinishing business. Innovation management studies innovation from a number of perspectives, describing effects of innovations on the competitive ability of established actors, and on the value of their resources. The companies were not prepared for the speed of the change.

HAFA Bathroom Group has given us the assignment to develop a standardized back panel for their bathroom cabinets. This cabinet is going to be applied to most of their current and future cabinet solutions. To this point, they have constructed unique suspensions-and back panels for most of their cabinet models. They have also been forced to pull wiring and assemble the cabinets differently because of factors like; position of the wall sockets, dimensions of the cabinets and their shapes.The company wants to distance themselves from their current solution, firstly because the cost of having manpower to design each individual suspension solution, secondly because they will save a lot of money when the manufacturing process requires a minimum of components to be constructed. As a result of this, the company can use their resources better to develop future products.The main idea is that the consumer isn?t required to change the suspension or back panel when they decide to buy a new cabinet.

The purpose of this report is to come up with possible improvement suggestions to the distribution central at Götene Stål & Verktygs AB (GSV). GSV is a wholesale dealer located in Götene. The company doesn?t produce anything it self, it buys in products and sells them to customers.The distribution central at GSV is the place where the products comes in and gets ready to deliver.To come up with possible improvement suggestions we started with process mapping over the main process and the distribution centre process. The main process here is from the point where the customer gives GSV an order to the point where GSV deliver the order.Our result shows that the major problem in the distribution central at GSV is the big volume differences in the incoming goods.

This report is a study in voltagelevel in connection with regeneration of brake energy from the tramtype M31 in Gothenburg.In the act of braking, the tram M31 uses electrical braking where the electrical motors generates energy and if possible send it back to the overheadline, where other trams in the nearby can use this regenerated energy for its own driving force. In cases where no other energyconsumers are located in the same section, there is a resistance witch task is to convert this energy into heat. The regulation of this resistance appears to cause an increase in the voltagelevel into far too high levels.Investigations of the trams regulationequipment and its construction have been done. Further have measurements on the overheadline been performed in order to map the voltagevariations during a longer period of time.The result have been showing that the voltagelevel during regeneration often is as high as 880V-920V, more extreme values have not been observed in a large scale. The values are especially high compared to the nominal voltagelevel.

This report is a study in voltagelevel in connection with regeneration of brake energy from the tramtype M31 in Gothenburg.In the act of braking, the tram M31 uses electrical braking where the electrical motors generates energy and if possible send it back to the overheadline, where other trams in the nearby can use this regenerated energy for its own driving force. In cases where no other energyconsumers are located in the same section, there is a resistance witch task is to convert this energy into heat. The regulation of this resistance appears to cause an increase in the voltagelevel into far too high levels.Investigations of the trams regulationequipment and its construction have been done. Further have measurements on the overheadline been performed in order to map the voltagevariations during a longer period of time.The result have been showing that the voltagelevel during regeneration often is as high as 880V-920V, more extreme values have not been observed in a large scale. The values are especially high compared to the nominal voltagelevel.

This report is a study in voltagelevel in connection with regeneration of brake energy from the tramtype M31 in Gothenburg.In the act of braking, the tram M31 uses electrical braking where the electrical motors generates energy and if possible send it back to the overheadline, where other trams in the nearby can use this regenerated energy for its own driving force. In cases where no other energyconsumers are located in the same section, there is a resistance witch task is to convert this energy into heat. The regulation of this resistance appears to cause an increase in the voltagelevel into far too high levels.Investigations of the trams regulationequipment and its construction have been done. Further have measurements on the overheadline been performed in order to map the voltagevariations during a longer period of time.The result have been showing that the voltagelevel during regeneration often is as high as 880V-920V, more extreme values have not been observed in a large scale. The values are especially high compared to the nominal voltagelevel.

The goal in doing this study has been studying public interpretations of media content in the commercials that this study uses. The analysis was based on two TV commercials for feminine hygiene products. Initially, they seemed to differ from each other, but soon the question whether or not they in fact did convey the same underlying message was raised. The theoretical premises on which the study was founded on are the gender perspective in advertising and the social construction of gender. To reveal the hidden signs appearing in these commercials and to find out their meanings, we used the method of semiotic analysis.

During the 1990?s a large number of building projects were revealed where lack of moistsafety precautions during the construction process had led to extensive moisture damage. Alsoresent implemented studies have shown that the problems with moisture damages have ratherincreased than decreased during the past few years. Moist is considered to be one of the mainfactors to cause unhealth due to deficiencies in the indoor-environment and does also causeunnecessary expenses and a reduction of the confidence in the construction industry.In this Bachelor of Science thesis three projects have been reviewed to examine how moistsafetyhas been observed during the construction process. Main focus has been to identify thebuilding components that are the most exposed to moist, and to examine how they have beentaken into account during the period of design and construction.

Syftet med detta examensarbete är att på uppdrag av Volvo Construction Equipment hitta en metod för att hantera och kategorisera idéflödet i deras idéhanteringssystem Interact. Den metod som användes var kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Slutsatsen är att metoden gick att använda för att kategorisera idéflödet men att ett material som sträcker sig över många ämnen tenderar att sänka tillförlitligheten på resultatet. Vidare bedöms materialet som detta arbete har producerat kunna användas för att bättre ta tillvara på idéer, vilket uppskattas av Volvo Construction Equipment..

To be seen is essential. Presently, the marketing of different well-known brands within the same product category is done with little variation. To marketing professionals, this creates an opportunity to market products in an unexpected way. The use of incongruent market communication and by creating a discrepancy between a well-known brand?s advertisement and brand scheme, which is already established in customers? minds, is one way to be different.

This report is a study in voltagelevel in connection with regeneration of brake energy from the tramtype M31 in Gothenburg.In the act of braking, the tram M31 uses electrical braking where the electrical motors generates energy and if possible send it back to the overheadline, where other trams in the nearby can use this regenerated energy for its own driving force. In cases where no other energyconsumers are located in the same section, there is a resistance witch task is to convert this energy into heat. The regulation of this resistance appears to cause an increase in the voltagelevel into far too high levels.Investigations of the trams regulationequipment and its construction have been done. Further have measurements on the overheadline been performed in order to map the voltagevariations during a longer period of time.The result have been showing that the voltagelevel during regeneration often is as high as 880V-920V, more extreme values have not been observed in a large scale. The values are especially high compared to the nominal voltagelevel.

Our common future involves many important challenges. People and nature need to improve the relationship in order to reach an ecologically sustainable development. In a society where consumption of products steadily increases, the consumer awareness about social and environmental issues connected to the products becomes an importent factor. More and more companies choose to work more actively with these issues and more and more products get labelled by some of the eco labelling organisations. From the cradle to the gate means that a study has been done on a part of a products life cycle.

Tile covered bathrooms require a wellexecuted waterproofing in order toprotect the underlying construction frommoisture. Länsforsakringar Uppsala paysannually out millions in insurance fordamages related to poor waterproofedbathrooms. In recent years, SP (SwedishNational Testing and Research Institute)investigated and researchedwaterproofing products, resulting ingreater shortcomings of product defectsthan expected.This report raises the problemsconcerning waterproofing and discusseswhy they occur. By studying productinstructions and insurance cases anddamage reports provided byLänsforsakringar, the most commonproblems concerning bathroomwaterproofing where concluded. Animportant part of the report was tofind out the actual cause to whywaterproofing damages occur.The results of the survey indicate thata common cause of water damage usuallyis related to poor productinstallations.

The energy in laundry rooms, in form heated air, can be utilized with a heat exchanger. A concept and an early prototype of the heat exchanger have already been developed to show that the theory works. This report describes the continued development and construction of the product.A field study was made in order to investigate the environmental usage and establish the product design. The most common washing machine was used as a calculation model, and calculations were also made to estimate the amount of energy in the air. A previous analysis of the existing prototype is also presented in this report, to show the products potential capacity.