The report describes an ecodesign thesis performed by the author at the ÅF EcoDesign Center. The basic idea of ecodesign is to develop products with a minimized environmental load, without neglecting other significant product aspects such as function and price. During the last couple of years the public interest in environmental friendly products has increased, which has made it possible for companies to make a profit from their investments in ecodesign. To meet the increasing market for ecodesign services ÅF started the ÅF EcoDesign Center, where the company has gathered all of their competence in ecodesign in order to help companies to become greener. The task was to develop a tool for an Eco Screening.

HemoCue AB is a multinational corporation targeted on manufacturing point-of-care analysisinstruments for medical treatment. Their main product, the DM 201, is outdated and has bigissues gaining new market shares. For example, no medical treatment center in Sweden usesDM 201 frequently. The project of developing a new instrument to replace it was assignedtwo students at the development engineering program at Halmstad University. The projectalso included integration of the new platform for DM 202 to HemoCue AB:s remainingproducts.The project began by defining the different technical areas concerned.

Probiotics is a special group of health products on the market. The most common type of  these is live cultures of lactic acid fermenting bacteria from raw milk . These include, among others, yogurt and various trademarks such as Hälsofil ®, Acidophilus ®, Dofilus ® and Kefir ®. Such products are often used by patients who are treated with antibiotics to combat the intestinal flora eliminated, thus causing digestive problems. The present work deals with yet another type of health product, viz.

Mobile Arts have a technical platform for handling maps and community-featured Points of Interest in cellular phones, where the users themselves can share locations with other users either in groups or public. Development of the platform regarding network communication has been included in this paper. The work evaluates different feasible business models regarding packaging the platform as a commercial application and also faces issues users have when using the product. Even if users found maps and POI interesting and cool in cellulars, the technical difficulties and lack of product focus during beta testing, were present. Therefore, the writers recommendation is more development of the platform and using a business model where Mobile Arts deliver to existing communities.

This project was conducted during the spring semester 2013 at mechanical engineering program at University Halmstad. The project was conducted in collaboration with MPQ Consulting in Halmstad. MPQ Consulting is a newly established company looking to take step into the product development world. The company has already had ideas and existing products. One of the ideas is to construct and design a form of beach games whose rules are based on the volleyball rules.

In many products a compromise between ground clearance and the required space to store the product has to be made. This problem attracted the attention of the authors of this thesis.The objective of this project is to develop a functioning solution to a foldable wheel. The solution should be applicable to several types of product groups. A limitation for this work has been made so that the work only covers solutions for lighter vehicles.The purpose is to drive this project forward, so that a solution can be found. Furthermore the purpose of the report is to clarify how the authors proceeded to design and construct the wheel according to a fixed specification.

The globalization of today?s society has enabled consumers to acquire products and services from all over the world. Global organizations have the entire world as a playfield and offer products and services across markets. Regardless perception and transparency of the global market, consumers are still individuals. Consumers may have different perceptions and ideas about products, their functions and usage.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how different kinds of information seekers are evaluating information quality in the information flow online. To address the problem stated, qualitative interviews were carried out with a librarian as a reference person and a group consisting of journalists and scientists. The result of the study implies that the reference person is well aware of the strategies employed by her in the search process. However, the respondents are not aware of the strategies they are actually using. An explanation is the respondents lack of education in information seeking.

There is always a need for more effective ways to store energy in order to reduce the human impact on the environment. One step on the way can be the use of flywheels as kinetic energy storage devices. Low frictional losses are essential for a flywheel to be effective. To minimize these losses active magnetic bearings (AMB) can be used to keep the shaft centered instead of the more conventional ball-bearings. AMBs use actuators and a fast control system that needs correct and noise-free measurement data of the shaft position and the current in the actuators to work properly.This thesis explains the process of constructing power electronics and a current measurement system for active magnetic bearings (AMB).

Handling product returns has become a critical activity for organizations as the volume of gods flowing back through the supply chain rapidly increases. Few research studies have published specific empirical data concerning the reverse logistics practices of companies. Information technology and information support has long been recognized as a competitive weapon ? capable of enhancing company performance and achieving efficient reverse logistics. Reverse logistics is very unlike the forward, as it is more reactive and also has less visibility.

Every now and then new political ideas appear which creates debate. A current example of political debate is the one which concerns the creation of a feminist political party in Sweden -Feministiskt initiativ. Apparent in the current debate is that there are two existing conflicts of ideas present. The liberal thought of politics of ideas stands against feminism's demand for presence in the political life. And the other, the conflict which concerns the question of where a line between the public and the private spheres should be drawn.

This study is intended to give an impartial view of a young and complex program in Sweden titled Product Innovation Engineering program. The purpose of this program is to increase innovation capability in Sweden that will result in new companies, patents and economic growth. The results from this study might give some direction to future innovation initiatives, but should primarily serve as a tool for the PIEp participants. The study will focus on investigating the creation of the program as well as the development of its strategy. From weaknesses and strengths within the strategy of the program the study should also attempt to show its future potential.

This Master Thesis has been carried out in cooperation with Ursus Medical AB (URSUS) which markets, assembles and sells the Rotex Screw Needle Biopsy Instrument ®. The instrument is delivered with an instrument holder. Customers had expressed dissatisfaction over that they needed to use two hands during a biopsy procedure, which resulted in a project to develop a new instrument holder.The project aim was to create concepts for how the new instrument holder should be designed, with focus on the mechanics. The new instrument holder would build on the existing basic principle that the screw needle and the cannula were screwed into the tissue. The thesis work would result in a technical solution and a functional prototype of the chosen concept.To achieve this, a generic product development processes were used and began with a comprehensive literature review.

The purpose of this master thesis is to evaluate how the current share price and market consensus affect security analysts target price and if an investor should pay any attention to it. Empirical data is primarily collected from qualitative interviews with ten security analysts but also from a quantitative e-mail survey. Our main finding is that security analysts are indeed affected by each others earnings forecasts as well as the current share price. This is not strange, it is in several aspects rational. Security analysts has often nothing to gain by standing out too much and not either by spending too much time trying to create their own opinions due to lack of time or the complexity of what is analyzed.

The aim of this thesis is to map the current internal information flow at Volvo Uddevalla, to detect obstacles in the flow and to find out how these obstacles can be avoided. The aim is also to describe how a corporation, in this particular case Volvo Uddevalla, creates knowledge and use information. The study is performed in order to create a base for the coming implementation of a new information standard. The method used is conducting an information audit investigating the current management of documentation according to the changes that have to be made to carry out the claims from the standard. The investigation is made by way of interviews with 16 of the employees at Volvo Uddevalla.