In today's society, the availability of energy plays an integral part in our everyday lives. Unfortunately, the price of energy in Sweden has increased in recent decades. A large part of our energy consumption goes to heating modules for houses, where heating methods that depend on energy sources such as electricity, district heating, fuel oil, gas and biofuels are the most common ones. During the winter period, the increase in energy costs becomes significantly evident, especially for small property owners. This increase in energy cost is most noticeable for home owners with electric heating.This thesis is written at the Halmstad University, in cooperation with a company, which makes parts of this thesis confidential.

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.

In this thesis a possible cost effective runner change of some of the units in the hydroelectric power station Olidan is investigated. The possibility to drive a unit at the same efficiency point through a change of the turbine shaft speed and the rate of discharge is tested. Furthermore the theories behind model testing, determination of efficiency increase from model to prototype and efficiency measurements shall be discussed and analyzed with Olidan as a starting point.A predicted curve has been built on information from model tests and field measurements on the existing runners and runner data from the test of the new model. The predicted curve shows the difference in efficiency between an existing runner and a modern one. It is the difference in efficiency that is used in the calculations that are to show whether changing to a pair of new runners will be cost effective or not.

This paper examines the reasons behind firms considering backsourcing. While firms experience problems with their outsourcing activities, backsourcing emerges as an alternative solution. Firms primarily take cost considerations into account when reconsidering their outsourcing practices, but this only scratches the surface. A deeper analysis is needed, since cost increases arise from issues such as quality defects and cooperation problems. Even though production costs are low, outsourcing always implies transaction costs.

The theme in this report has been how to benefit experience from accident investigations. The demand on the municipality to perform accidet investigations is relatively new, and maybe they aren?t clear what the demands means. This causes that there might be a problem to benefit experience from accident investigations, for improving the overall safety in the municipality. The main purpose of this report has been to clarify how experience from accident investigations, can be of benefit to society on a local level.

This project was started within the Market-Design programme of Elforsk, with the aim of developing representative test systems of Swedish distribution networks. Using such test systems as a basis for reliability and customer interruption cost calculations makes it feasible to analyse the network tariff regulation of Swedish power  istribution companies. In particular, it enables studies of the incentives for companies to invest in system reliability. Until now, the available test systems are either not representative of Swedish conditions, or too small in scale and limited in function.Within this project we have created two test systems. In order to represent the diversity of actual Swedish distribution networks, we have created one test system for urban environments and another for rural environments.

The economic analysis of building contracts is an unexplored field within Law and Economics. This paper makes an attempt to cast some light over the subject and encourage to more research within the field. The main purpose has been to describe why the actual price in a public construction project often turns out to be higher than the contract price and offer a way of handle that risk. In the paper a model is set up that shows an optimal contract given expectations on actual price and gaps in contracts. Cost increases for the buyer can mainly be explained by two situations.

Examensarbetets problemområde återfinns i den tidiga delen inom informationssystemutveckling. Denna utvecklingsfas, kallad Requirements Engineering (RE), innefattar aktiviteter för att förstå, dokumentera och validera de behov och krav som föreligger för ett framtida informationssystem. RE är en avgörande aktivitet i processen att utveckla ett informationssystem som tillfredsställer användare och kunders förväntningar och behov.De olika intressenterna som är involverade i RE-processen har olika roller, bakgrund och kunskaper. Av denna anledning föreligger olika problem och möjligheter med avseende på intressenterna. I examensarbetet utreds vilka dessa möjligheter och problem kan vara.

The purpose of this report is to study the relationship between the rescue service fire prevention activities and the number of arson fires in schools. An objective of the project is also to investi-gate the need of developing national methods for fire prevention. The results are based on a questionnaire study among 35 fire departments and further interviews with five of them. The results indicate that there is a relationship between the rescue service fire prevention activities and the number of arson fires in schools. The relationship is positive in the sense that arson fires in schools decrease with increasing prevention activities.

Denna rapport handlar om ett examensarbete utfört åt multimediaföretaget Animero. Det är ett litet företag med åtta anställda som jobbar med olika multimediaproduktioner med fokus på webb- och videoproduktion. Problemet för Animero var att det saknades en ordentlig kravspecifikation i projekten och att kunderna brukade utgå ifrån vad de själva tycker om istället för att tänka på dem som ska besöka webbplatsen. Vårt uppdrag blev att utveckla en applikation som ska ta fram underlag till en kravspecifikation vid beställning av webbplatser. Applikationen ska samla in information om kundernas målgrupp, deras företagsidentitet och de funktioner de vill ha med på webbplatsen.

This final project is an investigation about the responsibility in rooms where the walls and floors are exposed or partly exposed to irrigation of water, as a bathroom, laundry room and WC. The cost for all water damage is valued for 5 000 000 000 SEK each year. How is this possible with all information about the problem and good materials? Who is responsible? Incites had been made in the subject throw reading reports and participation in courses about how to make a room mention above. Discussions have been made with workers in the trade of making the walls waterproof.The conclusion in the rapport is about who´s responsible for the damages and will pay the cost of the renovation. The responsibility is discussed between the contractor and the insurance company.

In most software engineering project, users are only involved in the beginning of the project as a help to design the requirements specification but users can be involved after this phase too, but is it effective to do so? With this report we would like to investigate how effective it is to involve users after the requirements specification has been written and approved. To find out how effective it is to involve the users we try some fast and simple involvement techniques on a quite far gone project. These techniques include ethnographic studies, prototypes and surveys. We also interviewed a couple of people who work with usability and finally delivered a report with our results to them to find out if they found our result relevant.

The aim of this study is to evaluate whether the value of occupant load is over or under estimated when the Swedish general value for department stores, 0,5 person/m2, is used for dimensioning shopping centers. The data that was analyzed derives from seven shopping centers and one department store. A conservative method was used to calculate the occupant load factor. The analysis shows that two groups can be discerned: one group that is characterized by a lower occupant load factor that does not exceed 0,3 person/m2, and one group with a higher occupant load factor. Shopping centers with a higher occupant load factor are located centrally in large urban areas.

The purpose of this report is to study the risk of dust explosions at the candy manufacturing plant Leaf Sverige in Gävle, Sweden. The risk analysis was conducted with a preliminary hazard analysis, PHA and event trees. The analysis focuses only on the risk posed to employees and material damages at the plant. No third person injuries have been considered. Another purpose of this report is to study risk awareness and risk communication concerning dust explosions.

This study looks into the possibility, and profitability, of expanding a pilot project that has been put into action at GGP Sweden AB in Tranås, a manufacturing company that produces front mowers. The pilot project is meant to give GGP Sweden AB a more precise control of the flow of goods from their suppliers, and its essence has proven to be quite similar to the Japanese Just-in-Time philosophy.The study has been divided into four separate areas; mapping, supplier selection, supplier evaluation and cost analysis. These areas represent a holistic perspective on the expansion of the pilot project and cover topics varying from methods of finding suitable JIT-suppliers, constructing Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to reviewing costs and assessing profitabilities.In this report, the reader will initially take part in the works of mapping GGP?s manufacturing unit, pilot project and supplier base, which results in a list containing the most suitable suppliers for a Just-in-Time based collaboration. Afterwards, the reader will be led into the area of supplier evaluation, where five KPI?s are created with the purpose of ensuring that GGP will be able to evaluate their suppliers and pilot project in an effective way.