Due to their complexity and heavy wear from rail traffic, switches are a sensitive part of the railway infrastructure and moreover expensive to maintain. Furthermore, increasing railway traffic not only accelerates the wear rate but also obstructs the necessary maintenance measures. This paper examines the opportunities for a transition to a long-term maintenance strategy in the Swedish railway network. It contains a study of the maintenance strategy of Banverket, and also analyses statistics of errors in the railway infrastructure. The survey was completed utilising interviews with infrastructure managers, maintenance contractors, planners of railway operations and the Banverket material service department.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to adjusting corporate goals so that they are not only based on maximizing corporate profits, but include ethical standards on socially desirable behavior (Boatright, 2008). Even though many companies have integrated CSR into their business operations, there are still many issues that are difficult to tackle. Especially Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in the global business environment face many challenging situations due to the fact that they often have linkages to countries where the local government is either unwilling or unable to take care of its responsibilities. MNCs often find themselves with increased responsibilities when they start solving some of the issues that earlier have been the sole responsibility of states. A specific case situation discussed in this paper is related to ?conflict minerals?.

Ericsson?s factory in Kumla, Modules Kumla, became a hub for radio modules and micro base stations, which enables mobile communication through radio base stations, in 2004. Because of this the factory focuses more on the logistics operations. This has led to a need to be able to plan the capacity for the materials handling system. This master thesis has therefore been performed at Modules Kumla to develop a capacity calculation model for the material handling flow during the autumn of 2005.The work has contained a mapping of the material handling flow regarding to which activities was performed and how much time they consumed.

Att söka stöd och hjälp efter internationell militär insats om det uppstått fysiska skador är för de flesta fullt naturligt och accepterat. Vid psykisk ohälsa är det tyvärr inte lika självklart att erkänna för sin omgivning att man behöver stöd och hjälp. Problematiken kan utgöras av stigma, vilket innebär att man inte vill ses som avvikande eller annorlunda, att utpekas som den som inte orkade med psykiskt. Är det så att vårdbehovet inte är känt av Försvarsmakten uppstår ett mörkertal för dem som enligt lag har uppföljningsansvar, dvs. FM. Arbetet syftar till att undersöka hur stor påverkan rädslan för stigmatisering är, efter avslutad internationell militär insats..

This thesis is an evaluation of a new design concept for statorfeets in Gallejaur hydro power plant. Founder of the work is Vattenfall AB Vattenkraft. During the 70- and 80´s nuclear power began to be phased in to the Swedish grid, which meant that hydropower became an important source of rules. The generators began running in so called intermittent operations instead of basic operations, which meant 300-600 start/stop per year instead of one-ten numbers start/stop per year. In order to deal with the thermal forces that arise at every start and stop suppliers began to mount so called sliding joints, which is to take advantage of these forces and maintain the stator shape.

The thesis work focuses on marketing and its point of departure centers on mapping the utilization of social media as a form of marketing. The choice of this thesis subject has been deemed by the authors as one of particular interest due to the current popularity of social media in the Internet connected society and their use as marketing tools. Specifically, this thesis sets out to explore how companies exploit social media tools in marketing and how their use affects retail operations and customer relations in an effective and creative way.The report concentrates on qualitative data collection, the interview answers of four respondents, of which, two are considered experts within the field of social media. The choice of suitable respondents was strategic with the goal of covering as large a portion of the social media field as possible; one social media educator that works with companies and one who assists companies with social media applications. The remaining two respondents work in marketing and communications and employ, as part of their job, social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

In this essay I have examined text, speech and action in Chekhov's Three sisters, as well as how the characters express their wills in action and in speech. I have used different methods such as action analysis, the five W questions and BSI (background, situation and intention). These methods are similar to those actors use to uncover situatedness of characters and to find motivated and intentional patterns behind their actions.I have used these techniques to identify the plot, explore what happened before the plot begins and to read the text in terms of action. The aim was also to find the counter points where wills expressed in action are contradicted by wills expressed in speech. Using these methods I found that the characters in Three sisters manage their lives dreaming about the future or recalling the past, except the character Natasha.

The aim of this study is to describe and analyze how the European union relates to the different dimensions of abortion. What kind of problem is abortion and whose right is it? Does difference framings of the problem enable different solutions?By analyzing debates from the European parliament through Carol Lee Bacchis method ?What?s the problem approach? I have come to see that different representations of a problem changes the problem it self. This emphasis that a problem is a problem in one context, but not in an other.Depending on the work of, among others, Barbara Hobson and Ailbhe Smyth I have focused upon the European union as a economical project, leaving social issues to national competence. This makes the EU a patriarchal project that fails to guarantee women?s rights.

The thesis demonstrates protection solutions that can be suitable for a camp during internationalmissions in order to resist complex threats. The threats could consist of small arms, machineguns,RPG 7, anti armour missiles, mortar, artillery, HPM-weapons, car bombs, biological and chemicalweapons as well as sabotage and theft. It?s not the technology itself that makes the threat scenariocomplex it?s the way the opponent acts during the operations. The opponent acts usually incivilian clothes and therefore he is difficult to distinguish from other civilians.

AbstractBachelor thesis G3 in Business Administration, Linnaeus University School of Businessand Economics, Financial Control, 2FE90E, Spring Semester 2010Authors: Kennerth Eriksson and Leo H KochAdvisor: Lars-Göran AidemarkTitle: Balanced Scorecard in governmental organizations ? About, how and its meaning.Background:  The Balanced Scorecard is a Control System that includes both financial andnon-financial measures which intend to link the short-term business management with the long term vision and strategy. Businesses in the public sectors are different fromthe private sector on several levels and they often seek to reach multiple targets.Therefore, their choice of Control System becomes interesting. According to the SwedishNational Financial Management Authority (Ekonomistyrningsverket) among others, thereis no clear knowledge of how widespread the Balanced Scorecard is in governmentalorganizations. The lack of that knowledge is one of the questions at issue with this thesis.Is it only a few organizations that are using the Balanced Scorecard or parts of the model?Another question at issue is about how the Balanced Scorecard is used in the point ofcontrolling in the organizations we chose to investigate further.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is partly to investigate the existence and use of theBalanced Scorecard in governmental organizations and partly to describe the design ofthe Balanced Scorecard in the studied organizations and explain why they have chosen towork with the Balanced Scorecard and what impact it has on them.Demarcation: The first part of this study has been demarked to only look at the existenceof the Balanced Scorecard in governmental organizations.

Train travel has increased in Sweden, and future increase of train transports putdemands on the already vastly exploited railroad net. The increased need of capacitycan be seen in the ongoing and planned expansions of the railway track. One part ofthe railroad infrastructure which is affected by an increase of travellers is the design ofthe station platform. Since the platform is the place where the traveller meets thetrain, dangerous situations can occur in this environment. A number of studies focuson single safety risks, albeit there is no research to show the full picture of safety inthe platform environment.This study aims to treat and put together a compilation of risks for the traveller in theplatform environment in the form of a checklist, which can be used as support inplanning and design of a safer platform environment for existing or planned platforms.The thesis has, through case studies of five ongoing projects within the NationalRailroad Administration (Banverket), interviews with train company personnel andinternational railroad administrators, identified and treated safety (and security) risksin the platform environment.The conclusion of the study is that the relations between the traveller, the physicalplatform environment and the project organisation are important to explore andexploit when designing effective safety measures.

In this study we have examined the possible quality standards and methods for applications with service workshops in the forest industry. The purpose of the methods presented here was to start the work of standarardising the maintenance service in the industry and be of use for service providers in their quality effort.The methods we used to accomplish the study were interviews and field visits together with a comprehensive literature research. Our results are presented in the form of four solution proposals: a standard based on existing SIS standards for terminology and key indicators, checklists that are filled in by mechanics with customer participation, the construction of a instructions database, and the implementation of the method 5s.We believe our suggestions can help the service providers in the four problem areas that we have identified: long term strategy, documentation, recruitment of competent technicians, and standard procedures in their operations. These improvements will be beneficial for both the service provider and the customer..

Att ge sponsorer det perfekta erbjudandet ? En undersökning om Ljusdals BandyklubbBandyföreningar har det ofta tufft ekonomiskt och för att förbättra den ekonomiska ställningen kan föreningen öka sina sponsorintäkter. Syftet med den är studien blev således att undersöka hur en idrottsförening kan öka sina sponsorintäkter, samt hur en idrottsförening ger sponsorn det perfekta erbjudandet.Uppsatsen utgörs av en fallstudie och främst av en kvalitativ form. En induktiv ansats användes för att kunna forma en teori. Primärdata har samlats in genom fem olika intervjuer, vilka har analyserats utifrån det hermeneutiska synsättet.

The aim in this thesis is to use carbon, nitrogen and sulfur isotope analysis on teeth and bone to track diet and mobility of the population as well as the individual level from the articulated and disarticulated individuals from the passage grave Frälsegården, situated in Gökhem parish in the region of Falbygden, western Sweden.50 human samples were analyzed from tooth, mandibula and femur, together with 11 faunal samples from different bone elements of local wild and domestic animals.The results fall well in line with earlier stable isotope work done on passage grave individuals from Falbygden in stable isotopes: A homogenous group with a diet which was clearly terrestrial and lived on a pretty high trophic level. It also seems that the analyzed individuals deliberately focused their food intake to the cultural and natural, megalith and limestone landscape of Falbygden, and not to its surroundings, even if the passage grave is situated in the outermost areas of the region.A small study compares the sulfur results to with earlier work done on strontium isotopes. The results show that the different methods might provide a deeper understanding in the interpretation of the methods, and therefore suggesting that further work should be done to compare the methods..

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the library for children and young people at Sahlgrenska university hospital in Sweden from a salutogenic perspective. The sociologist Aaron Antonovsky states that human health is benefited by the salutogenic perspective, since it stimulates our sense ofcoherence.The theoretical departure point is sense-making theory. The theory states that in order to move through life, humans are dependent on a sensemaking process. To make sense of our current situation, we need information. What kind of information depends on the individual and its context.