This degree project is a realization of a strategy for collaboration between an industrial designer and employed workmen of a producing company. The collaboration aims to engage everyone involved in the co-authorship of a products design and manufacturing history. The realization has taken place in an open dialogue where the designer no longer owns the design process by himself. The project has been carried out in cooperation with the company Iris Hantverk. The company is owned by the Swedish body for visually impaired and has their main production facility in Stockholm.

This thesis is a product development project that was performed at Alfa Laval Tumba AB. In the past Alfa Laval have manufactured gas separators for engines where gas flows were cleaned from oil. A new business area for this kind of technology has shown to be the manufacturing industry where oil mist has to be separated from the vented air. Therefore a new and bigger design is needed to be able to handle the greater gas flows. A product like that would be a strong competitor on the market when the maintenance would be low in comparison to today?s equipment.During the project several concept suggestions were developed using customer interviews and research as input.

This thesis describes how a cost reduction project was done on the Packsize ondemand packing machine EM7. The cost reduction was achieved by making minorredesigns of the EM7.The project began by studying the EM7´s structure and function by working on itsassembly line. A short literature study on the subject Design for Manufacturing wasalso done.By working on the assembly line and by speaking with staff from production anddevelopment departments, a number of ideas for reducing manufacturing costs arose.Estimations of the potential cost reduction size for each proposal were done incollaboration with vendors and the purchasing department. Based on the size of the cost reduction, technical risk, impact on the assembly lineand the development time the various proposals were ranked. The two highestranked proposals were selected for further development towards finished solutions.One of the ideas that were selected to develop in to a finished solution meant thatsome of the pneumatic valves were replaced with others.

Background: Resources that are hard to put a value on and cannot be classified as assets in the balance sheet as well as the development towards the information society has led to an increasing need and use for voluntary information in the annual reports. The increase of voluntary information can foremost be seen in the field of human resources.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe the development of voluntary information about human resources in the annual report of a number of Swedish quoted companies. The purpose is also to see if there is a difference in the development between manufacturing companies and service companies.Method: Six manufacturing companies and six service companies were chosen from the Stockholm exchange A-list. Using both a qualitative and quantitative research method the annual reports of the chosencompanies were studied for the years 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2003. A model consisting of seven categories; health, diversity, recruitment, staff turnover and comfort, benefits and motivation, education and competence development, was developed to clarify were the development took place.Conclusions: After finishing the study one can tell that the amount of voluntary information about human resources in the annual report has increased even though the percentage share of the total annual report only has increased appreciably for manufacturing companies.

AB Sandvik Cormorant?s production unit in Gimo has identified a need to examinethe handling of products between operations with the purpose of generatingproposals of improvement for the product handling.The aim of this project is to study the existing manufacturing process and givesuggestions for improvement. The proposals should reduce the manual handling ofproducts, decrease the risk of damaging the products during the manufacturing andform a basis for increased traceability. Based on a mapping of the manufacturingprocess and the problem description, a specification of requirements has beencomposed.The mapping of the manufacturing process suggests that a change of the currentsystem is required. The company is recommended to decide how the producthandling between operations should be performed as guidelines for the productionteam.

This thesis has been performed at International Aluminum Casting AB in Eskilstuna,Sweden.International Aluminum Casting is currently working with a number of improvementsin their production in order to achieve their vision of being the leading aluminum foundry in Sweden. As a step in their improvement efforts, focus was directed ondeveloping the company's fixtures for machining.Efforts were focused on two main objectives: to develop a complete proposal on afixture which leads to a more rational use of an assigned part and also form general design advice for development of fixtures in the future.During the work progress, discussions have been made with experts at International Aluminum Casting within the field of fixture design. The objective was to obtain sufficient knowledge about the underlying problems with the current fixture for the part. At this stage of the thesis, a number of essential criteria for fixture design were produced. Information and inspiration were obtained by examining the company?s currently developed fixtures.After gathering the necessary information the process of developing three different fixture concepts started.

Today small metal parts are mass-produced as for example rollers in cylinder bearings. At high velocity cutting the metal is cut with a great force in a scissor-like device. Both precision and repeatability is important to be able to guarantee good quality, but from an economical point of view it is also important to keep a great manufacturing capacity. The part of the process that is most time consuming is when the metal bar, that is about to be cut, is fed to the right position. Therefore it is interesting to examine if the time used for positioning can be reduced.

Outsourcing means to contract out work previously done within the cooperation to a supplier.This is an increasing trend today. Traditionally companies have outsourced manufacturing butwith the growing specialization they tend to outsource other activities as well.China?s economical reforms and entrance into the World Trade Organization, WTO, hasenabled international business connections. Since China offers one of the cheapest labours inthe world, many companies have an interest in starting up an activity in the country. Themany foreign investments in China have lead to an economical growth which in turn hasmade it possible for China to invest in the Chinese competence and innovative capacity.The commissioner of this master thesis, SMS, is one of the leading actors in retrieval ofamong other things mounts and stands for flat screens and projectors.

The last few decades the development in the field of electronics has been huge. The components performance gets better at the same time as the manufacturing cost decreases. Many of the design moments that have to be done, are done automatically today, but it can get better. Especially for analog circuit design.At Electronic System in Linköpings universitet, research is in progress to develop a tool that can design analog circuits in reasonable time. It means that it has to size the components (transistors, resistances, capacitances etc), so that the circuit can fulfill the performance requirements.

This report contains a degree project made by the mechanical engineering students Lennart Andersson and Daniel Jansson. The project has performed in assignment by SOMAS Valves AB in Säffle. SOMAS are leading in development on control and on/off valves. To maintain this position they always want to improve their products. One way in this development is valves that are more tightened.The purpose with our project was to investigate another seat design on a HiCo (High Cobalt Alloy) seat to a SKV 150 PN 25 valve and compare this to an original HiCo seat.By modifying the seat on a ball valve we want to achieve a valve that leaks lesser then a valve whit original seat.

The company LightLift Esystems AB manufactures patented motorized lift systems for the illumination of halls with high ceilings. The company wants a new design for singular heavy lights in order to be more competitive.This project consists of the development of the new design under the requirements and specifications imposed by the company. The new design must support lights up to 300kg and keep the overall dimensions as low as possible without modifying the driving unit.This document contains all the designing steps followed to reach the final solution as well as the material selection, manufacturing process and assembly of all the parts that form it.The solution obtained shows to be very competitive with other alternative products, since this new design triples their maximum load capacity while the dimensions are very similar.In this context, the optical appearance was also very important to the company and so it was another main objective of this project. From an aesthetical point of view, the final solution proves to be very compact and versatile since it can either be hidden behind a false ceiling or covered by a plastic case that gives the design a very nice look.Finally, the solution achieved fulfils all the requirements and specification previously imposed. It is reliable, compact, cheap to manufacture, easy to assembly and it has a good optical appearance. .

This Bachelor of Science thesis was carried out at Metso Panelboard AB, located in Sundsvall, Sweden. The work lasted for 10 weeks and began at the end of February 2007. Metso Panelboard is one of the leading suppliers of complete lines, single machines, engineering knowledge and after-market services to the fibreboard industries. The task involved building a 3D-model of a dryer cyclone in the CAD-program Pro/ENGINEER. A dryer cyclone is the part where the tree fibres are dried in the process of manufacturing fibreboards. Currently, it takes about two weeks to draw a dryer cyclone. By creating a 3D-model of it, which should have the functionality to be generated to different sizes, the goal is to decrease the drawing time to about 20 hours and to increase the quality of the work. This report includes the fundamental theories behind the manufacturing of fibreboards with focus on the dryer cyclone.

ÅF Test Center in Borlänge had a need to expand their capacity for compressive and tensile strength tests. They wanted to do this by using a hydraulic cylinder, which they already possessed, to apply the force with. This required a load receiving structure. The aim of this work was to design and dimensioning a test bench for a cylinder marked NIKE 300 tons. The work would result in a completed design proposal on a test bench which could manage to run the compressive and tensile strength tests of up to 3000 kN.

The female labour is still a rather unexploited resource in many parts of the world. Unleashing women?s potential, giving them the possibility to start their own enterprises would increase the economic growth. Not only does women's entrepreneurship foster greater equality in the world but it also creates a more versatile economy. Sweden is considered to be one of the most equal countries in the world; still, entrepreneurship is an area with sharp gender differences, especially in some industries.

Upon marketing the system in Europe and the USA cost savings generated from reduced work force have been prevailing. Since the cost of labour is much lower in the Asia Pacific region other factors have to be stressed. The parameters of flexibility and quality assurance may however cover any initial investment in a production system. Our purpose is to value flexibility and quality in a manufacturing context, applied to DAS, in order to use it in investment calculations. In order to make an adequate estimation of different companies, due to problems associated with acquiring correct figures, the Key Success Factors needs to be examined so that the gathering of numbers can be conducted with more focus.