Due to a constantly increasing competitive pressure it is of great importance to constantly strive for improvements in order to gain competitive advantages. Lean Production is a concept that has been introduced with the aim to minimize waste and increase profitability. The purpose of this report is therefore to investigate how to perform effective planning according to the principles of Lean Production, in companys with customer exclusive products, through a case study at Sandvik Mining and Construction (SMC), and to investigate how SMC kan improve their planning of drifting rods at the production unit in Sandviken.The study started by creating a theoretical framework, to describe the subject planning and planning based on Lean Production. This frame work constituted the base for the case study which took place at Sandvik Mining and Construction, and also for the model and planning tool that has been introduced.The result of the study is partly a general model with factors that contribute to a more effective planning. These factors has beed identifed as SMED, which focuses on reducing set up times and in the end to facilitate the planning.

Insecticides will be removed from Swedish forestry, at present insecticides are used to treat our seedlings to avoid them from being attacked by pine weevils. With the forthcoming ban on insecticides alternative protective measures will have to be tested. Holmen Forest Ltd has aimed to find an alternative and have developed a mechanic pine weevils protection accessory as well as a new concept on planting pipes. Studies have been conducted on the behalf of Holmen Forest Ltd to see how planting with the newly developed mechanical protectors and plant pipe stands up against the conventional methods used today. The study was conducted over a three week period. Three factors were compared regarding planting quality including i) pressure around the plant, ii) the depth the plant ended up in, iii) plant angle. Mechanical plant pipes were used in the study, and where tested like a one-handed and a two-handed pipe. The study concludes that further development is needed for the mechanic plant protector to live up to the speed and quality of conventional methods.

In the haulage business customers are constantly requesting new features. Hence thedevelopment department must constantly update their system which ultimatelyresults in a variety of versions of the system. The large number of versions creates acomplexity which often reduces product quality and extends the developmentlifecycle time.The work on the following thesis has taken place at Scania?s Fleet Managementdepartment, which develops tools for hauliers to track their vehicle fleet in real time.The purpose of this thesis was to examine how Scania can handle an increasedamount of versions of the Fleet Management System which Scania expect will be seenin the future. The investigation was conducted by preparing a number of differentscenarios that formed the basis for a discussion of what these different scenarioswould mean for different parts of Scania?s business.

High demands are set on all equipment used in emergency service work, where small margins can be the distinguishing factor between life and death during a rescue operation. It is important that tools such as ladders quickly and easily can be dismounted from a vehicle and still satisfy the regulatory requirements for securing loads during transport. The existing solution for getting ladders down from the roof of a fire engine requires a large manual effort from the user in an ergonomically unsound posture.In this degree project a new ladder holder is developed with focus on the user to solve the ergonomic problems and at the same time create a more compact design that can be adapted to several different types of ladders. After an initial pre-study with user-interviews and measurement of forces and distances a set of requirements was formulated that came to govern the project's direction. Creative methods were used to generate concepts that improved the function and through design solutions, calculations and testing in CAD a base for manufacturing of a new product was created.The result is a completely new type of ladder holder that minimizes the user's manual effort and simplifies the securing of ladders in the holder.

As the staffing agency business is rapidly growing and suffering from accidents resulting in higher sick leave than in other businesses, it is of great interest to analyze which responsibilities prevail between the customer companies and the staffing agencies, when it comes to working environment for hired staff.The purpose of this essay is to clarify the distribution of responsibilities between customer companies and staffing agencies, regarding working environment. I would also like to analyze which consequences this distribution of responsibilities may lead to.To be able to answer these questions, I have chosen to use the legal dogmatic method together with the sociology of law method. I have studied legal sources, literature and also interviewed three persons who are active within the staffing agency business; one person from the Swedish Work Environment Authority, one person from the employers? side and one person from the employees? side.The conclusion of my survey is that the SAM-responsibility is divided equally between staffing agencies and customer companies, since the customer company who hires staff is equated with an employer. The employer must also ensure that there is an organized work adaptation and rehabilitation function within the company.

This is a qualitative study about small auditing firms and their customer relationships with SMEs. It contains a total of eight interviews, two with audit firms and six with SME?s.The purpose of the study is to understand how small audit firms manage their customer relationships and if it exist any expectation gaps between the audit firm and the SME.One of the conclusions is that trust is fundamental and gets stronger over time; it is also linked with the personal relationship between the business owner and the auditor/accountant..

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.

The goal of this essay was to study if the way gaming review sites presented their review evaluation has any influences the level of product involvement in the users it attracts. The assumption we did during the essay was that there was a connection between user?s level of product involvement and the quality of the community. To test this assumption we started out by performing observations on the comment sections in three gaming news sites which varied in their method for evaluating games. The result of these observations showed a significantly higher community quality in one of the websites.

The main purpose of this study was to examine how preschool teachers are working to promote each child's language development and whether they can ensure that they do that. Therefore I wanted to find out what a good language development implies for each teacher, how they work to promote each child's language development in daily practice, how they measure the actual language development and also what conditions the teachers have, to engage in a language development way to work. For the study, I chose a qualitative method, with structured interviews and all together I interviewed six preschool teachers, within the same organization in a suburb close to Stockholm.  The results showed that there is an ambiguity, among the preschool teachers, in what a good language development means, but it can be stated that they do have a language development way to work even if it needs to be developed. Further on, it has emerged that the teachers have the tools to measure children's language development, although they do not have the conditions yet to use the method to the fullest. About the preschool teachers own conditions in order to operate in a language development way to work, I concluded that they have a strong foundation to build on, but they still have much work ahead of them.

The competitive nature of the automotive industry has always implied a necessity to improve product development concerning time-to-market, cost and product quality. As capacity of computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools has evolved, so has the strive for simulation-driven design. Virtual durability testing using full vehicle models is one of many challenges posed in front of vehicle manufacturers when computer simulations are given a key role in product development.This thesis has been initiated as a preliminary step towards implementing dynamic virtual durability testing in the development of buses and coaches at Scania. The objective has been to assess the predictability of a full vehicle coach model and to what level of precision structural loads can be predicted. Previously performed proving ground testing of a Scania Touring coach has been the basis for the modelling and simulations in this thesis.A virtual model of the Scania Touring coach has been created in multi-body simulation software package MSC.Adams.

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.

The market for management training programs is growing and the supply of the service is increasing and getting further diversified. A consequence is a market with a wide variety of definitions of the very concept of development, and subsequently a wide variety of practices and methods to achieve development. The individuals that are subject to these programs seldom know what they are purchasing, or what to expect. When assuming a transfer of the developers view on development to the subject, a need for a greater understanding of the concept arises. The purpose of this thesis is to understand what views on development do exist among management trainers and map underlying dimensions of the views to increase the understanding of the concept of development.

As technology have continued to develop over the latest decades and become more advanced the pressure on the general citizens understanding of technology becomes a essential part to live in our society today. The transition have affected our society in great ways and have made a great impact on different groups, one of them being the elderly population in our society. The purpose of this study is to examine how the fast technological development in the latest decades have affected the elderly in our society. This from their perspective by gathering empirical data through semi-structured interviews with elderly people involved in the Agnes-project, a research project focused on improving the general quality of life for older people and increase their knowledge about technology. The study has shown that after the older peoples time involved in the Agnes-project their quality of life had improved in different areas. Areas such as increased cognitive activity, increased interest in new technology and an improvement in their communication with friends and family.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine projects for readingpromotion, aimed at boys, between 8 and 16 years of age. Therelations between librarians approaches to reading and methodsfor reading promotion are analysed with a gender perspective.The study is based on qualitative methods. Librarians involved infour reading projects have been interviewed. In the analysis, ourempirical material is related to theories of approaches to reading.Results have also been compared with earlier studies regardingboys reading, reading promotion, gender and male stereotypes.We find that an emancipatory approach towards reading is themost common. The librarians´ views showed that discussion,development, reading for pleasure and focus on the content of thebook were central to the methods used in the projects.

Boberg at Scania CV AB. The purpose was to investigate the technical and customer oriented possibilities for the development of a transport security measure against cargo crime, which is a growing problem in Europe. The main goal was to develop a concept that is possible to implement in the Scania CV AB Fleet Management System. Another goal was to develop a security model that will be used as a tool during Scania CV AB?s future development projects of transport security concepts.The work was divided into three main parts: a background study, handling cargo crime, transport security Scania CV AB trucks and market analysis, a stakeholder investigation including a questionnaire and interviews, and a concept development session.