This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using different benchmarking models to measure and compare the efficiency of Swedish gas distributors. It also discusses to which extent the results of a benchmarking study should influence the revenue-cap which will be implemented in the gas distribution sector in Sweden from year 2011. The discussion is based on arguments from both theory and practical applications of benchmarking. The results suggest that benchmarking Swedish gas distributors against distributors in another country using a parametric model is most favorable, but the reliability will be increased if non-parametric models are used also. Partial and total productivity measures could be used to confirm results of other benchmarking analyses.

   ABSTRACT  Title:  4000 seats to Sandviken - The business discourse development from 1921 to 2012 seen through two sports stadiums in Sandviken                            Level: Final assignment for Master Degree in Business Administration Author: Signe Jernberg Supervisor: Lars Ekstrand Date: March 2012 Aim:  The aim of this paper is to investigate the business discourse emergence during the 1900s and to make a contribution to how a business administration discourse can be seen today. Method: The business discourse is examined through a inventory of how business theories, practices and ideas have enabled the design of two sports facilities, Göransson Arena And Nya idrottsplatsen in Sandviken Municipality. The inventory is based on material gathered from Sandviken Municipality archives and from Göransson Arenas' own archives. The archives consist of such things as board meeting protocols, annual reports, bookkeeping, drawings, photographs and more. The method is based on Foucault's discourse analysis, focusing on his archaeological period.Results & conclusion: The archives show how business ideas, theories, and expressions can be seen in the two arenas. The results show how the concepts of customer, company and association are present in the design of the two arenas in different ways.

My questions at issue for this report has it´s beginning in the growing problems of thenegative effects of burning fossile fuels and the rapidly growing energyprices.1. Is it possible to design a micro scale powerplant?2. Is it economically interesting for a potential customer to by such a product?The aim with this report is therefor, with the help of design work and calculations, to answerthese questions and to create a platform for building a fully functional micro scale powerplant.The material used in the report is mostly product catalogs from various industries but alsostudy course littrature about steam engines.The result of the report is that it is fully possible to design a fully functional micro scalepower plant.

We have left the industrial society, and instead, we live in a post-industrial knowledge and information society. It is often said that industrial production has disappeared or that it has changed greatly. This means that fewer are employed in the manufacturing sector while the service sector is increasing, resulting in that the boundaries between production and administration decreases. The production goes from mass production to more flexible and specialized solutions. This puts greater demands on the logistics chain that continually need to work to meet customer requirements.

In today s society, services are becoming more and more important. They are however, partly because of their immaterial nature, separated from traditional merchandise, why the marketing and producing of them differs. Quality errors in a service are often difficult to discover before the service is brought to a customer, since the producing and consuming of it often takes place simultaneously. Quality errors in a service process are called service failures or in Swedish tjänstefel. Nevertheless, with an effective service recovery process, dissatisfied customers can be turned into satisfied ones.

Customer Relationship Management, CRM, är ett väletablerat begrepp inom marknadsföring och företags hantering av kundrelationer. Företag liksom akademiker riktar ett stort intresse mot just CRM, men samtidigt visar forskning att många implementeringar ute på företagen inte ger resultat som är tillfredställande. Anledningen tycks vara att företag tenderar att fokusera på den tekniska aspekten av CRM, istället för att se CRM som en helhetsansats för att hantera kundrelationer. CRM förenar relationsmarknadsföringens grunder med IT för att skapa lönsamma och långsiktiga relationer. För en lyckad utkomst av CRM anses själva implementeringen vara viktig och forskning belyser att utan planering, tydliga syften och förståelse för själva organisationsförändringen mot en ökad kundorientering som en CRM- implementering innebär, finns det risk för att initiativet misslyckas.  Studien syftar till att beskriva, diskutera och analysera CRM utifrån implementeringsfasen och faktorerna Ledning, Strategi, Medarbetare, Organisation, Kultur och Teknik för att skapa förståelse för hur företag uppfattar CRM och dess implementering. Studien har en deduktiv ansats där faktorer som i tidigare forskning definierats vara viktiga vid en implementering av CRM har legat till underlag för den empiriska studien.

Partille municipality is planning an extension of the building Forellen. Green environments in health care have been shown to improve the health of patients, especially in elderly care. This report addresses the possibility of using the leftover space in close connection to a dementia and short-term accommodation to a winter garden and a terrace. The report also analyzes the impact of these green spaces on the residents.The purpose is to find alternative answers on the issue through the study of nursing homes and green spaces, and that these may be useful for Partille municipality and inspiration for future projects. The goal is to get conclusions in to a report, drawings, and an oral presentation.The results show that the design of environments can affect human well-being and also be healing both mentally and physically.

Today the common people begin to understand the impact of a package. Many choose brand or product with great emphasis on how the outside looks, both in a good and a bad way.The company Gotlands Grafiska gave me the task to create a small basic selection of packages. The target group that the project was based on was craftsmen in the Gotland region. Based on analysis of the market and consumers to develop a range of packages covering a wide range of products sold on the island.During the project a clear theme was the desire to highlight a product and create some sort of exclusivity. It was important to understand how consumers and businesses think about packaging and its function.The result was five different packages, which together cover much of the need for the Gotland crafts and souvenir market.

This two years master?s thesis is about book circles for children, arranged by the public libraries in Sweden. The purpose is to gain knowledge about how children experience their participation in book circles, and how they experience their own reading. It focuses on children aged 10 to 12 years, and their leisure reading. The research questions are: What are the book circles? function for the participants? How and why do the children read? What kind of literature do they like? Do the children experience that their reading has developed through their participation in the book circles? What parts of the reading process do the book circles influence?The theoretical framework is threefold.

In which purpose, for who and when does equality get fullfilled in the education system? This studie takes aim on the upper level and second upper level school system to study what the curriculum says on the one hand and what the system brings out on the other. With critical theory as method, with Herbert Tingsten as founder, this studie analyzes the logic of the education system to set out if the pupils choice of education, after the upper level lower secondary school, in second upper level is legit with democratic principles such as freedom (of choice). The theory, used to analyze the individuals progress to be autonomous, uses Adam Swifts definition of freedom as an individual being autonomous. The findings of the study shows that what politicians chases as equality really i´snt equality.

The voltage regulation in Fortum Distributions medium voltage network in Stockholm does not work satisfactory. This results in too high distribution voltages with many customer complaints as a consequence. The reason is the model responsible for compensating for voltage drops in the distribution network. Despite several adjustments Fortum has not been able to find the source of the high voltages and has therefore appointed an investigation in the form of a thesis work.The aim of this investigation is to locate the error and to produce a proposal regarding the solution of this error using the existing system, common industrial knowledge, state of the art research and the option to use voltage readings from the different substations.The conclusion of this master thesis is that the largest contribution to the high voltage levels is made by the large compensation for distribution loses. Furthermore an additional error in the model has been found.

When contemplating entering an alliance the rationale behind the decision should differdepending on the size of the companies involved as well as on other important factors. The importantfactors influencing the decision are related to the resource pooling potential of the alliance,the power structure along with the business network the companies are a part of. Theanalysis has shown proof of a need for cooperation if one wish to succeed in the telecommunicationindustry and it has also determined which resources that are deemed to be most important toget in touch with, for our study object, to facilitate its access to the market. Those resources aredefined as a direct channel to the customer, funds/capital and the access to relevant businessnetworks. To get in touch with these lacking resources, three alternative approaches has beenproposed; all of them involving a strategic alliance decision.

This thesis describes the design of a tipping trailer, from a company?s demands andrequests to complete manufacturing documentation. The design is developed for thecompany Abexor AB in Östersund that produces tipping trailers. The product issupposed to be used by Abexors customer to transport cargos of different kinds,such as gravel, stone, dirt, etc.The work commenced with a meeting at the company where demands were set.After that a pre-study was conducted to find out what traffic rules were required forthe trailer to be allowed to be driven on roads. Similar products were examined tosee how the trailer could be designed.

The aim of this paper is to define the perceived consumer values that physical record stores create in order to compete with other distribution technologies. A qualitative method has been used, based on interviews with managers of three records stores in Stockholm. Interviews with their customers have been conducted also. The content has been analyzed with passable theories and the two sources have been compared when adequate.The conclusion of the study is that the physical record stores create many different consumer values, and that many of these are hard to transfer to other distribution technologies. One of the most important values for the consumer is that the personnel have a broad knowledge about music.

This thesis seeks to investigate how Swedish first class hotels by use of IT can improve customer service and thereby increase the share of loyal guests. The authors have conducted a qualitative study predominantly consisting of an interview-based case study at one of Stockholm?s largest independent hotels. To get a broader and more generalized picture of the hotel industry four smaller studies at other hotels in Stockholm were also conducted. The findings suggest that the use of IT can improve the communication between the hotel and its guests and make possible a continuing relationship between visits that strengthens guest commitment.