Today, the management concept of lean has stretched far from its origins in the Japanese automobile industry. When reaching the Swedish restaurant industry, the conditions for a successful implementation of lean change as a result of the high employee turnover and the significant amount of part-time employees characteristic for the industry. Combined with a high-end service profile, these workforce characteristics seem inconsistent with some of the basic principles of lean. By conducting a case study, this thesis aims to investigate the effects of a variable workforce on the enablers for a successful implementation of lean in a high-end service industry. Using a theoretical framework consisting of enablers for an implementation of lean in services, the study finds that the variable workforce inhibits an implementation of lean by complicating the effects of traditional training, as well as the possibility of understanding the lean concept at all levels of the organization.

Background and problem: Whether or not the pay to executives is fair is widely debated. During the last years especially the variable pay has been in the spotlight. But at what levels are the compensations really at? Media?s focus is mainly on the absolute highest compensations which may result in a skew view on pay-for-performance incentives.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to establish the levels of compensation to executives in a wide range of randomly selected companies listed on the Stockholm stock exchange during the years 2001 to 2005. Furthermore, the impact of a set of firm specific variables on compensation levels will be analyzed with basis in several hypothesis.Delimitations: The variable pay considered in this thesis will only be variable cash bonuses.

Finansiella kriser tenderar att drabba ekonomin med ungefär tio års intervaller. Prisbubblor med tillhörande djupdykning på marknaden är således inget nytt fenomen. Denna störning i marknadsharmonin har funnits under flertalet sekler och historien har en benägenhet att upprepa sig. Bakgrunden till studien är således att öka förståelsen för bubbelfenomenet och att, om det är möjligt, förhindra att det händer igen. Syftet med studien är att påvisa faktorer som har haft signifikant betydelse för den så kallade IT-bubblans utveckling i Sverige och Finland under åren 1995-2000.

This thesis describes an optimising compiler for translating from SMV to CLP(B). The optimisation is aimed at reducing the number of required variables in order to decrease the size of the resulting BDDs. Also a partitioning of the transition relation is performed. The compiler uses an internal representation of a FSM that is built up from the SMV description. A number of rewrite steps are performed on the problem description such as encoding to a Boolean domain and performing the optimisations.

Background: The background explains different financial crises and the effect those crises had on the Swedish acquits regarding variable compensation. The resent discussion regarding variable compensation and the main problems with bonuses is also explained. Our theories for this essay is mainly based on the new directions from Finansinspektionen FFFS 2009:6,7 and stakeholder theory. Other theories used are agency theory, stewardship theory and economic man.Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to analyze the new directions for variable compensation and to investigate if these new directions can lead to a more long-term thinking for managers in banks. Method: We used semi-structured interviews with open questions for our survey.

Three methods of sensitivity and unceartainty analysis have been applied to the operative stormwater- and recipient model StormTac. The study area is the watershed of lake Flaten in the municipality Salem. StormTac?s submodels for stormwater, pollutant transport and the recipient are cosidired. In the sensitivity assessment, the model parametres and inputs were varied one at a time by a constant percentage according to the ?one at a time? (OAAT) method and the response of the outputs were calculated.

The purpose with this paper is to examine whether other peoples opinions of a song and an artist influences an individuals own opinions of the song and artist. Through a quantitative study we seek to study whether such an influence exists and if it does, how strong that influence is. The study began with a pretest to examine whether differences existed when we manipulated our independent variable, how many times the song has been played at Myspace.com. Subsequently we performed a quantitative study by handing out surveys to students at Stockholm School of Economics on two different occasions. Our results show no significant differences in attitude or intentions when the amount of times the song has been played at Myspace.com is manipulated.

Environment friendly transports are one of the main topics in the industry and society today.Shell organizes an annual university competition called Shell Eco Marathon. The goal is to buildthe car that consumes the least fuel during a race. KTH participated for the first time in 2006.The engine for this competition, DoubleTwo, has been developed within the school. Theprinciple is a two stroke counter piston HCCI engine with variable compression ratio. HCCIstands for homogenous charge compression ignition.

In modern society in terms of economics and environmental impact, it is important to ensure that a company is as energy efficient as possible to reduce the amount of energy used. About 10 TWh of electricity used annually to pump drives in Swedish industry. Therefore, pumping system has great potential for energy savings.The objective of this report was to determine how much energy and money that can be saved with the insertion of variable speed drive to six pumps on Bleach plant 4 in Skutskär Mill. The work was performed with electrical measurements during one week, analysis of pump curves and the compilation of production data over a year.The results show that four of these six pumps were profitable and yielded an annual saving of 1172 MWh of electricity and 560 000 SEK. With an economic lifetime of 10 years and a discount rate of 6.8% the final result for the entire life-cycle savings became 3 355 000 SEK.

This thesis aims to investigate if there are any differences in the value relevance of yearly earnings announcements before (2000-2004) and after (2005-2009) IFRS were implemented for listed companies in the European Union. To assess the value relevance of earnings, an earnings response coefficient (ERC) is estimated using a linear OLS-regression model. The regression model uses accounting earnings per share as the explaining variable, with the corresponding return starting from (but not including) the previous year's earnings announcement date, ending at (and including) the current earnings announcement date, as the dependent variable. This study finds that there is no statistically significant difference between the estimated ERCs for the two periods. Although no statistically significant difference is found, data shows that the R2-values, which measure the explanatory power of the regressions, are higher for the period before IFRS.

Soil properties affect the chemical composition of soil water. When studying transport of chemical substances through a basin, it is therefore important to know from which soil layer the main part of the runoff is generated. The aim of this study is to develop an HBV/PULSE model with merged soil moisture and response routines, which generates good approximations of groundwater levels. It should be possible to extend the model to simulate transport of substances and take into account which soil layer the groundwater level is currently in. The hydrological version of HBV/PULSE is used since there is no need to account for pH or alcalinity at this stage.

This degree project contains a theoretical and a practical part about magazine design. Literature aboutthe subject?s typography and magazine design has been studied and put into practice on the professionaljournal Ingenjören. Besides of that a study about the history of magazine typography for the lastfifty years has been done.Typography and other design factors are important for the magazine to be readable and gives at thesame time the magazine an identity of its own, which has become more and more important throughoutthe last decades.The result of this degree project is a new design for Ingenjören, a design that agrees more with howthe journal want to be considered. A new template, a dummy and a manual have been produced.

The aim of this study was to examine the relations between sense of coherence (SOC), perceived social support and mood, the study also included gender and civil status in the analysis. In the analysis mood was the dependent variable. The study included 81 respondents, all students from Växjö university, who answered a survey with three parts: SOC 13, Mood Adjective Checklist (MACL), and an own constructed instrument that measured perceived social support. The result showed that those with a high SOC tended to have a greater mood. High scores on perceived social support also were related to a greater mood.

Abstract  Title: High-Risk Funds vs. Mutual- Index FundsA study of macro -variables influence on different funds choice Level: Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Author: Moses Yokie & Bo Lemar Supervisor: Ogi Chun & Cheick Wagué Date: 2011-05-25 Aim: The purpose with this thesis is to compare two different types of mutual-index fond and a high-risk fund in relation to the macro variables. The purpose also includes an investigation about if an investor will receives a higher return on high-risk fund than on mutual-index fund in a 10 years period.Method: A quantitative method has been use in this study, where the information has been received from Morningstar. Microsoft Excel has been used to process the collected data in order to calculate the expected return and the risk measures. The result is presented in graphs and tables on the empirical capital, in order to analyse and compare it with the theories and the selected macro- variables to see if there will be any correlation. Conclusion: This research shows that there is no possibility that the macro-variable factors can benefit an investment on high-risk fund or on mutual-index fund in the short run.

Betting under ordered forms has been around for a long time, but the recent increase in Internet betting and the large sums of money that are now involved makes it even more important for betting companies to have correct odds. The purpose of the essay is to calculate probabilities for outcomes of football games using a statistical model and to see if you can find better odds than a betting company.The data contains the 380 games from the 2004/2005 season and the variables form, head-to-heads, league position, points, home/away, average attendance, promoted team, distance and final league position from previous season. After performing an ordered probit regression we only find the variable ?form of the away team? to be significant at the 5 % level. We suspect the presence of multicollinearity and perform a VIF-test which confirms this. To fix this problem we perform a second ordered probit regression where a number of variables are combined to index variables. In the second regression we once again find only one significant variable.