Society and technology develop together in interaction processes. Because of the development of information technology, the Industrial society has been left behind in favor of a society where information is the key production factor, i.e. the Information society. In the Information society, social functions and processes are organized in networks. These networks integrate geographically separate markets to parts of a complex global economic system.

Evaluation of machinery costs is necessary for selecting appropriate farm machinery. Timeliness cost due to untimely operations is an important component of machinery costs. Timeliness costs can be high for crop sprayers, since pesticide application must be carried out within a short time interval. This Master thesis investigated the timeliness cost and the probability of a suitable workday for spraying. Timeliness factors were estimated for four different crops (oats, spring wheat, winter wheat and barley) using historical weed trial data.

Competition of spruce fiber raw materials has increased dramatically in the last few years, leading to the fact that transportation costs in the current situation represents a much larger share of the total raw material cost. The Holmen-owned pulp industry Hallsta Paper Mill's location on the coast also constitutes a problem, because of the lack of raw material, which is much larger there, than for a pulp mill located in the hinterland. For a coastal industry it?s therefore natural to import much of the raw material by boat or to buy it from the timber terminals, in order to maintain good profitability. The purpose of this study was to analyze how the size of Hallsta Paper Mill timber supply area, without competition, with competition and with terminal use, affects the company ?s transport costs.

The purpose of this thesis is to map out and investigate how the banking sector affects a customer?s willingness to change bank, and what the switching costs are for a customer when making these changes. A case study was performed through qualitative and quantitative questionnaires and interviews. The qualitative part was carried out to create hypotheses. The hypotheses was tested in a quantitative survey to be able to either accepted or rejected these them.

This thesis has been made in cooperation with Forsheda Stålverktyg AB which develops and manufactures injection moulds and diecasting tools. The main concern has been their Trading-system which provides them with considerable amount of quality lost function.Focus has to however be put on the analysis of the Trading-system due to the fact that this has previously meant various quality issues for the company.This thesis treats quality assurance of the Trading-system, identification of the problems in the process and improvements of these problems.Quality assurance is carried out when a company detects that their quality based costs become too high. Quality based cost are? the costs that would disappear if a company's products and its different operational processes were absolute? (Sörqvist, 2001 p.30, free translation from Swedish). High quality based costs often result in increased quality problems, which can lead to substantial economic loss for the company.This work has resulted in a thorough review of the Trading-system whereupon problems have been identified.

This paper investigates the internal product costing system in one of the Swedish banks with the purpose to evaluate the quality of its product costs and possible implications on decision making. The study shows that the current system distorts product costs by, among other things, using relative allocation of costs and time and by allocating all costs to individual units of products. We therefore propose an alternative product costing system, which mainly draws on ABC theory but is also adapted to the specific needs of service companies and of the Bank. This proposal is intended as a solution in this particular case and not to be generalized in other contexts. We hope however to add to the understanding of why more complex costing systems, such as the ones based on ABC theory are, according to previous studies, not widely used in practice.

The number of elderly in Sweden is increasing due to improved living conditions and better medical care. It is important that society adapts to the increase and begins to work preventively to reduce the costs of the increase. An important aspect is the elderly accommodation, the cost of health care in specific accommodation is almost twice as high as those for ordinary housing. Therefore, it is important that we availability adapt dwelling to allow older people to live in ordinary housing for as long as they wish, instead of moving to assisted living before they need it. If we can fulfil the elder?s needs with home care instead, society can save a lot of money.In this report, three different forms of housing has undergone accessibility increases and been inventoried and analysed.

After the deregulation of the Swedish pharmacy market customers can be lost due to stock-outs. Optimization of pharmacy inventory levels has thus become increasingly important. To minimize inventory costs while considering the cost of shortages the latter must be estimated. However, the shortage cost is very difficult to compute. Thus, the aim of this paper is to estimate the pharmacy-specific shortage cost parameter and its relation to other inventory costs.

Through extensive research it has shown that today?s sail boat owners are very frustrated concerning the limited choice of engine alternatives offered by today?s market. Besides rising fuel-costs, environmental awareness is very important in today?s society. Hence it is vital to find alternative environmental-friendly motors and replace combustion-engines. Zilent Ocean is an extensive project within Development engineering program at Halmstad University.

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.

Housing cooperatives in Sweden practice very long depreciation times for their buildings and assets, subsequently depreciation costs are very low. This study aims at addressing issues relating to potential upward revisions of these costs and the revenue levels needed by housing cooperatives to address these changes, while also providing a detailed summary of some chosen financial ratios under different circumstances. This study's results are based upon recent (2015) market data within the Stockholm region, collected through a manual process and analyzed quantitatively. On average, housing cooperatives EBIT do not cover their financial costs and have low profit margins. The average depreciation time is considerably above what a technical evaluation by other sources may state.

The Göta älv-bridge is a welded steelbridge which is located in Gothenburg,it connects the inner city of Gothenburgwith the island Hisingen. Cracks wasdiscovered in the steel in 1999-2000which started an investigation of thebridge to clearify the condition of thebridge. The conclusion was a monitoringsystem based on laser light sent throughan optical fiber.This report describes the bridge, thedamages, the monitoring system and thetraffic on the bridge.Stefan Pup, at Vectura Borlänge was mysupervisor during this work. In myinvestigation the costs of themonitoring system and the costs ofclosing the bridge is compared andevaluated. The biggest investigatingpart is the costs of closing the bridge.The results of my investigations is thatclosing the Göta älv-bridge would cost 1107 300 SEK / day.

The globalization that has occurred during the last few years has made it more important for companies to have a well-functioning logistics system. Customers demand more options, which lead to an increased flow that creates greater demand regarding packaging and transports. Diverse logistics costs are nowadays a substantial cost for many companies. Therefore, more effort is aimed at optimizing transportation to lower these costs.The purpose of this project is to create a user-friendly calculation of logistics costs that illustrates how the costs vary, depending on how the flow is structured. This is done by examining which aspects that affect the total logistics costs and by mapping which aspects that should be included in a calculation of the logistics costs.Literature studies have been carried out parallel with empirical studies at Scania's production unit, MC, in Oskarshamn.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union a lot of hope has been put on civil society to help develop Russia into a more democratic society. This study explores the constructive elements in the relationship between civil society and the state in Russia, and how this enables the work toward political development. By using Julie Fishers theory about political development and organisational autonomy I discuss the varying and often complex ways in which civil society and the state interacts. These are often not mentioned in the liberal tradition, which believes that civil society's most important democratic function is to act as a watchdog for the state.There is very limited political space for NGO's in authoritative Russia. The existing oppositional NGO's are important for the political development, but they are few and their impacts on society are limited.

This thesis investigates the socio- and environmental economic effects of a deep repository for spent nuclear fuel in Forsmark in the municipality of Östhammar. I seek to show the general picture but focus on the effects on employment, environment and income. Cost-benefit analysis is used to investigate the differences in utility between a scenario with and a scenario without a deep repository in Forsmark. Most of the possible effects can not be valued and many can not even be quantified with the data available today. Therefore this thesis has a bit of a ?preliminary study character? and seeks to show what we know today and what needs to be further investigated when available data allow it. The costs that could be valued are noise from the traffic during the period of building and emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides from the transportation of rock masses during the building period.