Continuous improvement is one of five principles in General Motors ? Global Manufacturing System (GM-GMS). GM-GMS has been used by Saab Automobile AB since 2003 and is a central component for realisation of GM?s vision. Internal audits have discovered problems with one of the tools, practical problem solving (PPS), which needs to be improved.

AbstractAuthors:Stefan Harrå and Magnus BjörkAdvisor: Markku PenttinenTitle: Accounting Consequences of the change in pension accounting Background to problem: When the revised IAS 19 comes into force January 1, 2013, it means that two of the three accounting principles for defined benefit pension plans are disappearing, including the corridor method. The corridor method has made it possible for companies to defer its actuarial gains and losses. Now that the corridor approach abolished then the unrecognized actuarial gains and losses immediately be covered by equity, which involves very large amounts of some companies. Why the amounts have grown so big is much because of the discount rate. The discount rate is a controversial parameter, and there is disagreement on how it should be fixed.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine the accounting implications this will have for the company applied the corridor method, and if there is some parameters in the actuarial assumption that is more important than others.Methodology: The thesis has mainly been based on a qualitative research through qualitative interviews with a small sample that is affected by this change.

We live in an exciting society, characterized by continuous changes and challenges. The effects of the globalization are widespread. The continuous flow of people, capital and goods follows in the wake of advances in communications, transport and information technology, resulting in a changed situation for different stakeholders in the society. This situation leads to increased cooperation and exchange, but also increased competition. The primary means of collecting empirical data for this study was interviews and a document study.

In Europe, the central governments are the ones to coordinate the international standards and strategies regarding GPP; Green Public Procurement. However in Spain a GPP program was introduced late and only applied to the Central Government Institutions, (AGEA) (BOE nr. 027, 2008). These means that smaller administrations, such as, Autonomous Regions, Municipalities and Town Councils were not included in the program. The absence of a national program which excludes those governments made them introduce their own criteria for GPP, and the difference in criteria varies from one government to the other.

COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) is one of the most widespread lung diseases today and is a growing cause for suffering and mortality worldwide. It is considered to be the third leading cause of death in the near future. Smoking is the most important risk factor for this disease and about 50% of smokers develop COPD. The purpose of this study was to mediate the experience of not being able to stop smoking described by persons diagnosed with mild or moderate COPD. The study involved five women and five men.

We live in an exciting society, characterized by continuous changes and challenges. The effects of the globalization are widespread. The continuous flow of people, capital and goods follows in the wake of advances in communications, transport and information technology, resulting in a changed situation for different stakeholders in the society. This situation leads to increased cooperation and exchange, but also increased competition. The primary means of collecting empirical data for this study was interviews and a document study.

Background to problem: Pensions play a big role in people's lives when life expectancy continues to increase. Companies can choose different ways of reporting their pension plans, and within the defined benefit pension plan poses the actuarial gains and losses that can be reported based on three different methods. Only one method will exist from 2013, how will the companies that use the other two handle the new situation?Purpose: Investigate why different companies have chosen to report its actuarial gains and losses along the corridor approach, directly against income or directly in equity. How will the companies that use the corridor method manage the situation when it will only be allowed to report in other comprehensive income as of 2013 and how will this affect them.Methodology: Data was collected through qualitative questionnaires sent to companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Nordic Stockholm, Large Cap and Mid Cap, and a qualitative interview.

The purpose of this risk analysis is to investigate if the transport of dangerous gods through Halmstad is a threat to the surrounding area. The report shall serve as a component in the making of pre-plans and the planning of exercises..

Several cities have implemented various projects to improve traffic safety in city centers.During 1970s and 1980s the city centers changed as the suburbs grew and large shopping centers were located outside the center. At the same time, several projects were initiated with construction of pedestrian streets and restriction of traffic in the center. In year 1994,shared-used areas were introduced in Sweden and these areas are often used in center environments.In Sweden, municipalities are responsible for integrating security in public places and in comprehensive plans and detailed development plans. The National Board of Housing,Building and Planning is the authority for administrating planning issues and develop general guidance about planning. Traffic is one of their key issues, although today there are no concrete guidelines from the National Board of Housing, Building and Planningfor the design of traffic safety in city centers.Traffic safety in city centers affects many people because the city center is a public place.It is therefore important that there are current guidelines available that are helpful for changes and improvements in traffic safety in the city center.The purpose of this report is to formulate guidelines for planning city centers from a traffic safety perspective.

Through the lenses of religion?s role in society, the purpose of this thesis is to examine, the role of the Church of Sweden in providing support to people at the end of life. Questions asked are:  "What types of spiritual support is offered by the Church of Sweden during terminal care provided in patients' homes and how is this support expressed in church orders, assembly instructions, plans of operations and congregation letters?" and " How can the work of the Church of Sweden be understood, based on theories of religion's role in society? The method used is a content analysis of the Church Order, assembly instructions, plans of operations and congregation letters in 17 different congregations within the diocese of Lund. I then engage in a discussion with theories on differentiation and the privatization of religion as a means to interpret my results.

Quality assurance means to systematically work for better understanding of the customers needs, demands and expectations. The goal for this study was to investigate how quality can be assured in the job follow up that is made by forestry contractors after soil scarification and planting. The study consisted of a description over the current follow up process at SCA forest AB Jämtlands forest administration, analysis of current follow up situation and an investigation of follow up process made by contractors in other line of business. The first step was a statistical comparison where the own follow up made by contractors were compared with follow up made by SCA them selves over 100 stands. Two soil scarification contractors and two planting contractors carried out the silvicultural measures. The results showed that significant differences between a number of quality factors measured, for example number of approved plants or approved scarification points, average score on stand and number of totally planted plants.

In supporting an efficient way to gather and develop contact information for the Uppsala Association of Technology Physicist alumni, it is crucial to have in place an adequate and user-friendly system allowing the continuous collection and storage of such contact information. This can achieved by the creation of a website where alumni can enter information about themselves and where such information in turn is stored in a database. A database containing relevant tables has been developed in MySQL. In utilizing phpMyAdmin, the programming language PHP and Web Server Apache, a fully functional website to be included on the Association's website has been created..

Many companies are currently working to optimize and streamline their processes and production lines to achieve higher profitability. In increasingly competitive markets, companies are working to find solutions to increase the value of their production with such a small use of resources as possible. A tool used to accomplish this is the Lean management system. Lean comes from the production system that Toyota has been developing since the early 1900's, The Toyota Production System (TPS). The Lean philosophy helps companies, by working towards continuous improvement in its operations, to achieve higher customer satisfaction, more efficient production and ultimately higher profitability. Many companies are working to implement Lean in their organization. But there are many who fail to implement a complete change towards Lean.

The social dimension in the EU, explored through the document texts of the Treaty of Rome, the Lisbon Strategy, the Social Policy Agenda and the Swedish Strategy ReportThis paper explores the social dimension of EU social policy, except the aspects of the economic and labour market. The EU documents reveal an underlying line of thought stemming from the alignment of the six founding countries, spearheaded by France, with the conservative corporatist welfare model. As one of four European welfare models, the conservative corporatist model emphasises labour market issues, corporate social responsibility and the subsidiarity principle in EU social policy. It also influences how the texts define the terms social, social policy and social exclusion. The definitions determine how policymakers combat problems such as social exclusion and identify the policy issues to be included in EU social policy.The Swedish Strategy shows how the country is responding to the objectives that it has been assigned by the EU and how it plans to attain them.

Several cities have implemented various projects to improve traffic safety in city centers.During 1970s and 1980s the city centers changed as the suburbs grew and large shopping centers were located outside the center. At the same time, several projects were initiated with construction of pedestrian streets and restriction of traffic in the center. In year 1994,shared-used areas were introduced in Sweden and these areas are often used in center environments.In Sweden, municipalities are responsible for integrating security in public places and in comprehensive plans and detailed development plans. The National Board of Housing,Building and Planning is the authority for administrating planning issues and develop general guidance about planning. Traffic is one of their key issues, although today there are no concrete guidelines from the National Board of Housing, Building and Planningfor the design of traffic safety in city centers.Traffic safety in city centers affects many people because the city center is a public place.It is therefore important that there are current guidelines available that are helpful for changes and improvements in traffic safety in the city center.The purpose of this report is to formulate guidelines for planning city centers from a traffic safety perspective.