The ISO 9000-series is a set of quality standards created by the International Organization for Standardization. The series is intended to provide guidance to companies in the process of deploying an effective quality management system. The series includes the requirements standard ISO 9001. This standard contains requirements on how a quality management system should be designed and how companies generally must work with quality issues. When a quality management system is introduced, if wanted, a quality certification can be implemented.

Active sensors are used a lot in the society and industry, for example to gain better control over processes or to get proximity sensing features in different products. Within industry there is great interest in developing safe automation products that can be controlled with high accuracy but still at a low cost.The goal of this project is to develop a prototype of a non-contact rangefinder that measures distance using infrared light. The sensor is to be used for various applications in industries with relatively high accuracy and be compact, but at a low cost. By implementing a rangefinder into a product, more accurate detections of an object?s presence can be done.In this project a new distance sensor, EPC600 from ESPROS, was used.

The cost of construction projects have increased during the past few years. Different actors in the construction industry work together to advocate various measures to mitigate these cost increases. One of these measures is to try to improve the efficiency in the phase of production. By striving for a kind of standardization with a constant quest for improvement, the productivity can increase while the costs of production fall.For this thesis has a case study been conducted at the construction company JM AB which is seeking this. They call the approach structured production and have implemented various measures to achieve a more productive output.Based on information from reconciliations, the cost and the spent hours of craftsmen have been analyzed at the company where the case study took place.

The cost of capital for traded companies is basically assessed on information from thefinancial market. Small and non-traded companies are lack of this necessary financialmarket information in order to determine an appropriate equity risk premium and tocompute the cost of capital.In the absence of financial information necessary for an external investor, it is difficult toevaluate a non-traded company with the Capital Asset Pricing model (CAPM), which isbased on the financial market information. It measures only the systematic risk, which isthe contribution of one share to the market risk of a portfolio. It is therefore important tofind models that reflect the small and non-traded companies? real business value and theirunique characteristics.

In 2010, Airwatergreen AB started testing their new technology, the Airwaterwell, an atmospherical water generator of their own design that is running on solar heat, with a production capacity of three litres of water per day and m2. The purpose was to focus on foreign aid organizations as main purchasers for project investments towards rural communities in developing countries that suffer from lack of, or compromised quality of drinking water. In order to further understand if this technology would bring a positive impact in the developing countries, the company contacted the Swedish University of Agriculture for a socio-economic study of the Airwaterwells? potential. The authors elected Cost benefit analysis as the appropriate method for conducting the study and India became the study region because of its many problems with water related issues such as diseases as well as insufficient water supply for households. The regions that this study is based on are Gujarat, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh given their differences in income, health situation and poverty rate.

The Swedish production of biogas was 1,5 TWh 2011. About half of the production was used as vehicle fuels. The cost for upgrading biogas depends on the size of the biogas plant and its gas production. If the gas flow is low the cost will be high. However, further development of existing upgrading technologies or development of new ones, have good potential to decrease the upgrading cost for small scale biogas plants.

This thesis describes possibilities for Metso Paper to lower their costs of spray pipes for their pulp wash press TRPE, with maintained good functionality and quality.Information that can be used by competitors has been censored in this version of the essay.To find solutions, alternative suppliers have been contacted and asked to quote. There has also been a new spray pipe designed. The manufacturing costs of the new design have been calculated.The thesis also contains a concept generation of an alternative product to the spray pipes in installations where a high pressure washer is used.To be able to ask other manufacturers of spray pipes to quote, a demand specification based on the currently used spray pipe was made. This was then sent to two alternative suppliers.An investigation of earlier used spray pipes, and the currently used, shows that the nozzles are a big part of the total costs of the spray pipes. To attempt to reduce the nozzles high cost an concept generation was made to find the best solution for a new design.There was a request that it should be possible to change the internal brushes in the spray pipe without cutting and welding.

New method for measuring road quality- A statisticalstudy of the relationship between road quality andsocioeconomic development A new tool with implications for road maintenance has the potential to yield statistical data for road quality in a large number of regions. This thesis investigates the possibility to develop a method, from this data, for evaluating the effects of road quality on socioeconomic development.The thesis is essentially divided into two parts. Part one looks to qualitatively establish the link between socioeconomic development and road quality and the second part focuses on how to develop a method for evaluating the effects of road quality on socioeconomic development. A method was devised using categorical data and a multinomial regression model. This method provides a comprehensive overview of the complex relationship between a variety of different variables.

This thesis describes how a cost reduction project was done on the Packsize ondemand packing machine EM7. The cost reduction was achieved by making minorredesigns of the EM7.The project began by studying the EM7´s structure and function by working on itsassembly line. A short literature study on the subject Design for Manufacturing wasalso done.By working on the assembly line and by speaking with staff from production anddevelopment departments, a number of ideas for reducing manufacturing costs arose.Estimations of the potential cost reduction size for each proposal were done incollaboration with vendors and the purchasing department. Based on the size of the cost reduction, technical risk, impact on the assembly lineand the development time the various proposals were ranked. The two highestranked proposals were selected for further development towards finished solutions.One of the ideas that were selected to develop in to a finished solution meant thatsome of the pneumatic valves were replaced with others.

The Swedish system of environmental quality objectives is a so-called MBO, Management By Objective and has the purpose to guide the Swedish society towards sustainable ecological development. The system involves the whole society from the parliament and the government down to individual citizens. At the regional level, it is the county administrative boards that are responsible for the work with the system of environmental objectives. At the County Administrative Board of Västmanland County, it is the environmental unit who is in charge of work with the environmental objectives and they want input for how to improve their work with the environmental objectives, both internally at the Administrative Board and externally with external parties.The main purpose and goal of the study is to present the work of four other county administrative boards regarding their work with the environmental quality objectives and to identify external parties? opinions of how they want the County Board of Västmanland county to work with them in this matter.The work is designed as a case study of four county councils, where the environmental objectives coordinators at the four county administrative boards were interviewed about their work with environmental quality objectives.

One must consider cost effectiveness when deciding how resources within the health sector should be distributed. Quality adjusted life years (QALYs) are used to measure the value of different medical treatments. QALY is based on utility maximization theory, which suggests that a QALY is always a QALY regardless of who receives it. Therefore, a produced QALY is worth the same regardless of the age or the initial health of the patient. Previous research has shown that these assumptions do not seem to fit the real preferences of individuals.

This study deals with the technical and economic feasibility of replacing the nuclear power plant reactor Ringhals 3 with a biofuel power plant. A technical investigation has been executed to determine which of the systems and components that could be reused and which ones would need to be replaced. The investment costs of the reconstruction have also been estimated. The cost of the electricity production has been calculated as well as the emissions of the new biofuel power plant. Based on the established rate of return, the lowest average spot price of electricity that makes the investment profitable has been calculated.

När en kommersiell hamn byggs ut fordras omfattande muddringsarbete för att säkerställa ett brukligt djup för sjöfart. Då stora delar av muddermassorna ofta är förorenade av tungmetaller och miljögifter krävs särskilt omhändertagande av dessa. Traditionella omhändertagningsalternativ består av att deponera massorna på särskild avsedd plats på land eller tippa till havs, något som inte tillåts för förorenade sediment. En relativt ny metod är stabilisering/solidifiering (S/S) som innebär att muddermassorna behandlas med ett bindemedel för att sedan kunna användas som fyllnadsmaterial i exempelvis kajkonstruktioner. Dessa alternativ behöver noga vägas mot varandra med hänsyn till ekonomiska och miljömässiga aspekter.

There are many good reasons to ponder about what it is that makes life worth living. To observe and reflect on what it is that gives a person a good quality of life is arguably the essential core of social-work. The aim of this research was to investigate how 15-year old youths interpret quality of life. The key areas that we explored in order to meet the research aims were: what did the youths interpret as a good quality of life for a 15-year old and for an adult, how did they view their own quality of life, and did they think that the regional context (i.e. if one lives in a big city or in a small town) affects how one interpret quality of life.The studywas based on interviews with four boys and four girls.

BackgroundA cost that lately has been discussed related to audit is the higher cost for auditing of small stock company. The question is if this cost is higher than the total utility of statutory audit and should it in that case be statutory. SRF says that the condition for small stock companies development is an abolishment of statutory audit. FAR consider that auditing is important for development and continuation.PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there are any winners or losers among auditing firms and accounting firms in Sweden if the statutory audit for small stock companies abolish.MethodThe paper is both a qualitative and a quantitative study that is based on primary data made from an interview and a questionnaire investigation. ConclusionOur conclusion is that the big Winner is the accounting trade.