The purpose of this study was to examine whether there were any differences in how first-line managers within   municipal care   rated their management leadership qualities, and structural empowerment before and after the course in "leadership, learning and improvement". The study had a quasi-experimental design and 64 managers participated. There was a significant improvement in the LaMI factor ?Achievement orientation?, after participation in the course "leadership, learning and improvement". In other factors, there was no significant difference before and after training.

This report describes an bachelor thesis work which is performed in cooperation with SVIA that develops and sells automation solutions for the manufacturing industry. The thesis purpose was to evaluate the machine FeedLine to find opportunities for improvement in the product?s design that could lead to more standardization and thus improving the efficiency of manufacturing and assembly.Based on these basic issues suggestions for improvements were developed:How can the design of FeedLine be improved to facilitate the assembly?Can more standardization be imposed on FeedLine?s design to enable more stocking of standard components?An initial pre-study was conducted to evaluate FeedLine?s to find opportunities for improvement in its overall design. During the pre-study staff at SVIA and two of its clients was interviewed. Based on information gathered during the interviews and observations by the authors improvements was amendments.

With the globalization, companies in the West chose to shift production to developing countries to cut down costs. This had a major impact when child labor and very poor working conditions in these factories were discovered and led many companies to take responsibility for their suppliers and the employees by adopting voluntary so-called Codes of Conduct.There is a subtle balance to enforce improvement of working conditions for employees at suppliers´ factories and to keep costs down. On the one hand, companies would like to conduct extensive audits at their suppliers to ensure code of conduct compliance and thus protect their legitimacy. On the other hand, audits are expensive so companies would like to minimize audits to keep costs down. Companies thus have to strike a delicate balance in relation to how many and what suppliers they choose to audit.

In a time when milk producing farm businesses face decline in profitability it is of great importance to examine how the situation can be improved. This thesis is a study off efficiency in milk producing farm businesses represented by Swedish, Dutch and German farms. The aim of this study is to investigate whether any differences exist between companies in these countries. Moreover, the study includes a mapping of a number of factors that determine how efficient milk production can be managed. This mapping is based on a literature review on prior efficiency studies followed by qualitative interviews with milk production advisors as well as a questionnaire sent out to dairy farmers in Sweden.

Rising energy prices and higher energy demands have led to an increased focus on energy efficiency, in particular in the real estate business, where high potential for energy savings exists. Within the next few years, buildings that were constructed in the sixties and seventies will be in need of renovation. One of the challenges of these renovations will be to improve energy efficiency. A real estate company that is facing this challenge is Uppsalahem AB, based in the city of Uppsala, Sweden. This study focused on analyzing energy efficiency measures when renovating old buildings.

The Swedish pulp and paper industry meets higher demand for energy efficiencyi mprovements with increasing energy prices and changes in the Swedish renewable energy certificate system. One action of energy Efficiency improvement is by using secondary heat, that otherwise would have been treated as waste heat, for use in a system with lower temperature demands. The aim of this Master´s thesis is to identify possible secondary heat sources in a typical Swedish pulp and paper mill and to investigate what economic benefits the secondary heat will provide when being used for pre heating of wood chips to a kraft digester.The Master´s thesis focuses on three secondary heat sources; dry warm air, warm water and moisture saturated warm air located inside the pulp or paper mill. Two types of kraft digesters are simulated within this study, a typical Scandinavian digester and a modern twin vessel steam phase digester.Due to quality aspects and low temperature level drying is the drying technology with dry warm air rejected. Using warm water in direct contact with wood chips increases the quantity of water to the evaporation plant and thus reduced pulp or paper production and is therefore also rejected.

Background ? The last 20 years healthcare has been facing increased demands on efficiency and increased customer satisfaction. This despite reduced resources and increasing demand. These demands are presents in all departments within healthcare organisations, including medical laboratories that currently receive an ever-increasing number of remittances. Laboratory flows are quickly becoming overloaded with samples and related materials.

The study examines how efficiency and effectiveness are measured in charity organizations in Sweden. The rules of Svensk Insamlingskontroll, Årsredovisningslagen and Bokföringslagen make up the accounting framework upon which efficiency and effectiveness are measured in charity organizations. The study is based upon interviews with the sector's main actors: Svensk Insamlingskontroll, Frivilligorganisationernas insamlingsråd, auditors and the charity organizations themselves. The interviews are supplemented by studies of the guidelines issued by Svensk Insamlingskontroll. Today's measure of efficiency is the percentage of a charity organization's income that benefits their goals, called nyckeltalet.

Although Lean has received an increased amount of attention in the service context, research still has not established how successfully Lean manages to increase service productivity; since service productivity consists of both efficiency and quality. Research regarding productivity discusses the risk of a tradeoff between efficiency and quality in service production processes. Therefore, this thesis aims to explore if the tradeoff in a production setting with low variability in demand and low customer participation exists, after Lean has been implemented. With a qualitative approach, a case study has been conducted at Scandinavian Airlines Ground Handling to evaluate the effects of Lean in the baggage handling process. The result of the study shows that the tradeoff has not been overcome; efficiency has increased at the expense of quality.

In a time when milk producing farm businesses face decline in profitability it is of great importance to examine how the situation can be improved. This thesis is a study off efficiency in milk producing farm businesses represented by Swedish, Dutch and German farms. The aim of this study is to investigate whether any differences exist between companies in these countries. Moreover, the study includes a mapping of a number of factors that determine how efficient milk production can be managed. This mapping is based on a literature review on prior efficiency studies followed by qualitative interviews with milk production advisors as well as a questionnaire sent out to dairy farmers in Sweden.

The report is about efficiency of a current production group where there is no clear production flow and there are some buffers between the operations. The efficiency is done with the help of a tool that is calledWork process of flow production which is used by Atlas Copco CTO. The most obviously results are that the lead time drops from 25 hours to 425 minutes and that the balancing loss decreases from 85 % to 8 %. The report focus on decreasing transports, decreasing buffers, more reliability in lead time and quality. And a more stimulating labour content for the workers is another result..

With the globalization, companies in the West chose to shift production to developing countries to cut down costs. This had a major impact when child labor and very poor working conditions in these factories were discovered and led many companies to take responsibility for their suppliers and the employees by adopting voluntary so-called Codes of Conduct.There is a subtle balance to enforce improvement of working conditions for employees at suppliers´ factories and to keep costs down. On the one hand, companies would like to conduct extensive audits at their suppliers to ensure code of conduct compliance and thus protect their legitimacy. On the other hand, audits are expensive so companies would like to minimize audits to keep costs down. Companies thus have to strike a delicate balance in relation to how many and what suppliers they choose to audit.

This thesis investigates how the level of implementation of New Public Management affects an organization?s efficiency. According to theory, a high level of implementation leads to a more efficient organization. This thesis is based on two case studies conducted on two units within Stockholms Stad. One of the units shows a high level of implementation of NPM and a high level of efficiency.

AbstractThe overall purpose of this thesis was to investigate to what extent new research findings, in neuroscience and learning, may be useful in a school improvement context. In a qualitative interview study combined with questionnaire, we have investigated the approach to school improvement that exists in a municipality. Informants have been head teachers in preschool and primary school, special education teachers in a student health team and a development manager. The outcome of the study showed that all of the study participants, all of which have a formal mandated to work for school improvement occurs. It also shows that informants, according to their professional position, express different goals when relating to school improvement.

Compressed air is a low efficiency media, and is thus very expensive to produce. This thesis work began by mind mapping how to create savings on the compressed air system at Billerud Skärblacka AB. Certain issues have been chosen for further studies.In order to identify the consumption of compressed air at PM 8 and 9, several measurements were made. At PM 8 there were not found any pressure drop, only large pressure variations for short periods of time. The causes of these pressure variations were not established.