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.

The public sector in Sweden outsources its core business to a very large extent, whileinsisting on running its IT operations internally in a traditional way. IT as a service ingeneral and cloud computing in particular has become incredibly popular in recentyears, offering cost efficiency and greater ability for the business to concentrate on itscore activities, which is why it should be a promising alternative to the traditional wayof running IT internally. To achieve an understanding of why IT as a service has yetto take off in the public sector, a study of its use of IT/IS, what the effect of IT as aservice is, and the opportunities and challenges that cloud computing represents, isnecessary.The study, which was conducted using a qualitative hermeneutic approach, was initiatedby a literature review, followed by six in-depth interviews with five respondents,all of which hold many years of experience in the area. The outcome of the interviewsindicated that IT as a service should represent a promising and feasible way of reachinghigher levels of cost control, and a greater focus on core activities. Furthermore,the results indicated that Swedish legislation along with a high level of businesscomplexitymight be reasons for the low amount of IT as a service in the public sector.Through careful analysis and examination of the business? current situation, as well ascomprehensive knowledge of Swedish legislation with regards to the implications ofLagen om offentlig upphandling, the public sector can avoid IT as a service becomingmore expensive and more complicated than necessary, and achieve cost efficiencyalong with a greater focus on its core activities through it.Future research could examine the possibility of a framework for the integration ofcloud services within the public sector?s IT/IS environment, and whether there is aspecific size of a cloud implementation at which it?s more cost efficient to go withtraditional IT operations..

At a manufacturing company, due to the competition the price is reducedtowards the manufacturing cost. Therefore it is important to maintain control ofones costs and keep calculations up-to-date.This thesis deals with cost accounting at a aluminium-processing company. The report focuses on calculating machine cost per hour since the manufacturing costs are the major part of the total product cost.Managers on the company believe that the costs they use in calculations todayneither is up-to-date nor advantageous in a market aspect and due to that their calculations need to be revised. The machines cost per hour is a major part in the manufacturing calculation. The company wants to provide a competitive price that also covers their costs.

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.

This study is a value chain analysis for timber in East Africa. It was commissioned by Vi Agroforestry, a nongovernmental organisation registered in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania engaged in a rural development program that involves promoting tree planting and enterprise development (Vi Agroforestry, 2012). The purpose of the study was to identify and describe common value chains for timber in the countries where Vi Agroforestry operated. Value chain is a concept and a framework describing how to structure information regarding activities included in satisfying a certain customer need, e.g. procurement, logistics, transactions, production and marketing.

The Swedish road transport sector relies almost completely on fossil fuels. In 2007, as much as 96 percent of the total sales of fuels was made up of petrol and diesel, while at the same time the share of total emissions of greenhouse gases in Sweden that came from road transports amounted to close to 30 per cent. Sweden is by no means worse off than any other European country in these respects. In order to address the questions of high oil dependence and CO2 emissions the European Commission has proposed a reinforcement of the legislative framework, with a 10 percent minimum for the market share of biofuels in 2020. Furthermore, the proposed target is binding for the member states, unlike the current voluntary target of 5.75 percent by 2010. More than doubling the usage of biofuels in only a bit more than a decade will most likely not be possible without policy interventions.

Nine out of ten larger companies have an intranet today which is supposed to improve the communication withinthe company and save money. A great part of these intranets were established in the beginning of the 1990?swithout giving any thought to the users and their needs. How does the communication inside the corporationslook like when the intranets that are supposed to be the source for every information request, aren?t usable? Whatother sources do the users use and how much?The aim of this master thesis is to examine information source selection at a specific company.

Distrilux International AB, a company within the Electrolux-group, works among other things with storing of products from other companies in the Electrolux-group. This rapport contains a cost analysis of the two Distrilux warehouses in Motala and Mariestad. The company offers five services in these warehouses, in-loading of products from a local factory and from external factories, storing, out-loading of products to Sweden (domestic) and for export. Since there has been some hesitation of the accuracy of the price-model of today, a master's thesis has been advertised. The purpose of the thesis has been to investigate the agreement of the price-model of today and the apportionment of the costing in warehouses.The main problem is to determine which activities is to be considered important in the price-model.

In Sweden plans to build high speed railways have been around since the early 1990s and the planshave developed to be more precised since. The future Swedish high-speed rail network is supposedto consist of two lines. Götalandsbanan; from Stockholm to Gothenburg, and Europabanan fromJönköping through the Öresund Region to Hamburg.The description of the aim to build high-speed railways in Sweden has in former reports always beento achieve rapid passenger traffic between big Scandinavian cities and Europe. There are almostnothing mentioned about the possibilities of high-speed transports of cargo on these railways. Thisstudy aims to clarify the freight transport market for Götalandsbanan and Europabanan.Today there is only one transport system with high-speed freight trains.

This thesis investigates how inventory management is practiced at a Swedish sawmill company, how practice differs from theory in this field and how the company could make more use of this theory. To do this we have performed a study on relevant literature and compared our findings with a field study on Moelven Valåsen AB. Our analysis shows that a large gap between theory and practice exists. We identify several reasons to this, including some sector specific problems when calculating cost rate for timber inventories. Suggestions on solutions to these problems and an example of how a cost rate can be estimated with relatively simple means are presented.

Since the 1980s, companies have taken a larger interest in quality and it´s economic impact within the company. Having the knowledge that it´s not quality that costs money, but it´s rather the lack of quality. The work immerses itself in the field of cost of poor quality and the development of key performance indicators.The thesis is performed at Bufab Holding in Värnamo. Bufab Holding is a trading company which mainly buys and sells C-parts. C-parts include fasteners, other small metal-, rubber- or plastic parts such as wires, springs and electronic fasteners.The aim of this thesis was to make a survey of the cost of poor quality and to find key performance indicators (KPI) for cost of poor quality that can be continuously monitored.

Purpose ? The purpose of this thesis is to develop a total cost model for container transports and create a tool that calculates a suitable transport quantity from an economic view, which fulfills the demands on delivery service. To achieve this purpose the following questions will be answered:Which costs are affected by the decision between the two transport alternatives LCL and FCL?   How does the decision of sending product LCL or FCL influence the delivery service?  How can a tool be constructed to simplify the decision-making process regarding the choice of sending products LCL or FCL?  Method ? A total cost model was developed. This model is supported from existing literature.

A Biogas plant in SLU?s (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) management sustains to behave in con-nection with the new animal stables at Lövsta. There will primarily manure from stables that rot to biogas. The biogas plant will also have the capacity that rot others substrates that can arise in the farm operation. The aim with the biogas plant is to produce non fossil electrical and gas heat for own customs, to reduce smell impact from stables and to make possible different types of research investments within the area.This study has implemented multiple cases study of different investment scenarios.

Introduction/Background: Economic evaluations help decision-makers to make informed decisions regarding resource allocation. Information generated from CEA can support evaluations of a new intervention with current praxis. The evaluations also provide information as to whether an intervention is cost-effective, both in economic terms and in health gains. Objective: The aim of this thesis is to investigate the use of economic evaluations in public health, with a focus on CEA. Use of economic evaluations is regarded as both a method for evaluation and as support for informed decisions.

This paper studies the research foundations created in 1994 from the former wage earners? funds out of a portfolio management point of view. Firstly it describes the seven largest foundations and their different portfolio management structures. Secondly it analyses the performance of these foundations measured as the intercept, Jensen?s a, in a linear regression of the excess returns of a portfolio versus a proxy for the market, as well as the Sharpe-ratio.