The improvement programme Six Sigma has often been surrounded by an air of success since it was introduced in the 1980s. Yet there are cases in which introduction of the Six Sigma improvement programme show far from successful results, even complete implementation failures with no traces of the Six Sigma methodology or any improvements after completion of the introduction. These failures can cause severe damage to organizations through direct monetary loss caused by a negative result of the investment. Indirectly the failure can cause confusion in the organization and loss of employee motivation. The conclusions have been derived based on a qualitative case study at a Swedish telecommunications company.

The aim of this report is to give a picture of how attitudes and behaviours of owners of environment cars look like and how they can be influenced. The alignment lies on environmental cars which run on biogas and ethanol which both are renewable fuels. The starting point is to sort out if it is environmental thinking that controls the choice and use of an environmental car. The feeling is that there are many other factors that can be more controlling, for example the price and the quality of the car. The result of the questionnaire survey which is the foundation of the report shows however that those who buy an environmental car do it mostly because of environmental reasons.

Background:The value a consumer connect with a certain brand and its design differ from person to person. This value ought to be investigated. Why does people buy expensive things when there are cheaper alternatives? Is it brand equity and/or the perception of a brand?s value that make a difference? People strive to show themselves and to perform through products, which makes it interesting to see to the perceived value of design.Tweens is a group of consumers that are easily influenced to consume products by their surrounding. To choose clothes, shoes and other products after what your surrounding?s demand, is a way of adapting yourself to society.

The aim of this study was to compare perceived disability in daily activities, anxiety and depression for patients with chronic pain (>3 month), before and after rehabilitation. Another aim was to examine if there were any correlations between disability in daily activities and the extent of anxiety and depression before and after rehabilitation.For the measurements, Disability Rating Index (DRI) that measures disability in daily activities, and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) ) which measures the extent of anxiety and depression were used. The study was carried out with 50 patients who had suffered from chronic pain and with the objective to return to work after rehabilitation. Of these, 90 % were female. The measurements were carried out at three measure points; before rehabilitation, seven weeks after rehabilitation and one year after rehabilitation.The main result did not show any statistically significant improvement in ability to perform daily activities.The only significant difference that emerged was an improvement in anxiety seven weeks after rehabilitation compared with before.

This master essay is about teenagers, alcohol and the preventing measures taken by the Swedish government. Consequences of the rising consumption of alcohol among adolescents and how to prevent dangerous alcohol consumption in the future is one of the most prioritized issues in the Swedish society today. Today there is no prevention that clearly shows any effect on teenager?s alcohol consumption and the education about the dangerous effect of alcohol is clearly not the same in schools around Sweden. To gain knowledge about how teenagers view their own consumption of alcohol we have used the Grounded Theory.

AimThe aim of this study was to try to understand youngsters and their attitude to alcohol in the countryside and in a large city. The questions at issue have been: How do youngsters from the countryside, who drink, and do not drink alcohol, view the school- family- and friendsituation? How do youngsters from a large city, who drink, and do not drink alcohol, view the school- family- and friendsituation? Can we understand youths? attitude to alcohol on basis of the factors: School, family and friends? Are there any differences and similarities?MethodInterviews have been implemented with four youngsters in a large city and in the countryside. To gain as much as possible from the interviews a questionnaire was distributed to two classes in year nine in the countryside, and one class in the large city. The interview material was analysed on the basis from earlier research and two theoretical models.ResultsAccording to the youngsters that drink, both in the countryside and the large city, the most common view in school was that high demands are put on the youngsters and that they should study more then they do.

The LSH-study started in 2003 at the department of Health and Society at the University of Linköping. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between life condition, stress and health. A total of 1007 people from ten different health centres in Östergötlands län participated. At the follow up, a couple of years later, 795 of the 1007 participated. 127 of the 212 in the attrition turned down the follow up, twelve people were not invited (for example in case of death) and the rest did not respond at all.

  During the 2000s, the ship owners have become more and more concerned thattheir ships save fuel. Several projects have been undertaken to exploit the resourcesavailable on board today?s vessels to reduce fuel consumption. As a stepin this the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) today offera Weather Routing service to ships. By planning your route more effectivelymuch fuel can be saved.This thesis has been about developing a fuel prediction program (FPP) forhow much fuel a ship consumes in different sea conditions.

The purpose of the study was to describe hemodialysis patients self-reporting salt habits associated with cooking and food intake. Furthermore, the purpose was to investigate possible differences in inter Dialyze significant weight gain at low and high self-reported salt consumption. The study was an empirical descriptive study of comparative features and consisted of a convenience sample from two hemodialysis units in southern Norrland. Study group consisted of 37 persons who had been ongoing hemodialysis treatment and their age ranged from 42-86 years. A questionnaire was used in two parts and both parts contained 15 foods.

This essay aims to examine the meaning work at daily activity centers gives people with intellectual disabilities and the questions these people consider necessary to ask in quality surveys. This has been done by interviews with twelve respondents in various daily activitiy centers within a private care company in the Stockholm area. The theories that has been used to analyze the empirical data is SOC - sence of coherence, stigma and empowerment. The result shows that the meaning of daily activity is to create and maintain social contacts, feeling important and needed by others and an opportunity to feel ?normal? and like everybody else.

The media industry, and especially the news, in Sweden is living in a dark world that seems to get even darker by the minute. According to Nordicom (2013) the number of readers in the ages 15-24 has dropped by 24 percentage points between 2007 and 2012. This is a big problem for the news industry, but also for democracy that require citizens that are well-read and know what is going on in society. Enda and Mitchel (2013) found that 65% of people in the USA have stopped reading a certain news source since it no longer fits their needs. Maybe with a better understanding for young adults needs this trend can change.This qualitative study was conducted using interviews with eight respondents to find out why young adults who study at a university consume news.

The study aims to reduce energy consumption in apartment buildings where individual metering and charging of heat is applied. The aim is to develop planning and design for individual metering and charging in apartment buildings.The study is based on literature review, interviews and case study that include analysis of existing documents. Interviews were carried out with the property developer and the involved consultants who planned the apartment building Yasuragi. To investigate the differences the condominium association has noted in heat consumption between flats, the debit values of the heat were used to discern which houses that were furthest from the average consumption. On these flats there were temperature measurements and thermal photo shoots made for discriminating behavior and possible construction techniques which could be the explanation for the heat spread.Boverket shows that the consumption of heat can be reduced by 10-20% after insertion of individual metering and charging in an apartment block.

Minimizing power consumption is a critical part of many embedded design projects. Thechallenge is to limit the power consumption of the system and at the same time providesatisfactory service to the user. With regards to microprocessors, the main way of limiting powerconsumption during program execution is to adjust the frequency and the voltage at which theprocessor operates.To enable the implementation of real-time scheduling with support for dynamic voltage andfrequency scaling, an exhaustive study of the Freescale i.MX31 embedded microprocessor isperformed. Specifically, the power consumption relationship to all relevant frequency andvoltage settings is investigated. In addition, to enable frequency and voltage scaling in a real-timeenvironment, a complete timing analysis of proposed voltage and frequency scaling methods isperformed and their suitability for use in real-time systems is evaluated.To integrate voltage and frequency scaling capability into OSE RTOS, a software module hasbeen developed for this operating system.

According to Food and Agriculture Organization newsprint is defined as: Uncoated paper, unsized (or only slightly sized), containing at least 60 percent of mechanical wood pulp. The consumption of newsprint in Sweden was just over 798 000 tonnes in 2009, which represents approximately 90 kg per person. Although there are studies that predict a drastic reduction in newsprint consumption in the Western world, there seems to be a clear difference between forecasts for the future given by statistical analysis of newsprint consumption and forecasts given by experts in the industry. The former predict a continuing increase while the experts see a coming decrease in consumption.In this report, both demand and business strategies of newsprint in Sweden are studied. The study also presents a forecast of the future which is based on historical data and qualitative interviews.

This thesis has been carried out on behalf of IV Produkt AB and intends to set an average ratio of thermal energy losses in apartment buildings that were built during the 1960-1990. This shall be derived by analyzing the total district energy consumption that has been divided into three parts: heat energy losses (the actual heating requirements), the heating of domestic hot water and heating energy consumption for the controlled ventilation.Three different residential areas that were built during the years 1962-1966 and one that was built in 1993 has been analyzed. All residential areas are located in Växjö urban and contains between four and six apartment buildings.The analyzed objects have a mechanical exhaust ventilation systems and district heating as the heating method. No own laboratory work or experiments have been done in this thesis, the calculations have been done on the basis of parameters from VEAB, interviews with property managers, and literature studies. By calculations, we have got a result that is reported in Chapter 6.