The high level of competition and the rapidly growing technology development has created new challenges for today's businesses where they are forced to deliver more customized products at a lower price and a shorter time period. This places high demands on the companies' ability to design and develop better products in a more efficient way. In addition to developing products, the design process focuses on securing long-term success for the company by developing nourishing skills. However, to achieve an effective design process the companies must improve their ability to plan as well as use their knowledge base in a more efficient manner. Toyota's product development system is a critical component for companies to address challenges that they?re facing and offers a great potential to create significant competitive advantages.

The Swedish automotive industry has since way back been struggling with bankruptcy, abroad buy outs and staff cuts. Competition and pressure on prices are two factors that affect the automotive industry. Because of this, the companies are pressured to continuously developing their work in addition to be able to compete on the market. The aircraft industry has successfully managed to implement additive manufacturing (AM) and for motorsport has several components manufactured with AM been used. When AM is used as a manufacturing method, there are a number of advantagesthat follows.

The number of people that are categorized as being homeless in the Swedish society are increasing. This might be an indication that the methods being used today shows not to be working efficient enough. A group of researchers connected to the University of Lund are now in a process to spread new workingmethods against the problems with homelessness in Sweden. Their goal is to completely erase homelessness as a social problem. This new method of working is distinctively different from the one currently beeing used.

Since the late 50th century, the automobile has been normative in the Swedish society (Lundin 2008). This has led to an urban environment deeply characterized by the motor vehicle and its necessities, while other means of transportation, such as train and bicycle, have been ignored and put aside. However, over the past decades, a new trend has been seen in urban planning as a consequence of the increasing knowledge of the negative qualities caused by the car. As a result, the bicycle is seen as a conceivable transport mode.This thesis examines cycling on four issues:- Why is there a need of more cyclists? - How can the total number of cyclists as well as the number of satisfied cyclists increase? - Which factors affect the choice of transport mode? - Which factors affect the choice of route?The first two questions are discussed from a literature study that was conducted at the beginning of the thesis.

The goal of this study is to examine how the market reacts when information about the exchange of a CEO becomes public. It also examines factors such as gender and whether the departure was voluntary or not, discerning if the market behaves differently concerning any of these aspects.To achieve this, the study was performed using an event study. The selection consisted of 48 companies on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, who had during the years 2005 to 2008 underwent a change in leading management. These units were submitted to hypothesis tests, to determine if an abnormal return was attained during the event window. The tests were performed on the units as a whole, and divided up after gender and whether the departure was voluntary or not.The results of the study show no statistically significant abnormal return caused by the announcement of a CEO exchange.

In today?s society the average person is flooded by information from everywhere. This is in particular the case when using the Internet; consider for a moment the fact that a decent search engine at this moment scans 8 058 million homepages. For a user that repeatedly comes back to the same site, the case is often that they know what they are looking for. The problem is to isolate the important information from all the other information embedding it.We would like to state that we have found one possible solution to this problem, where the user himself can define what information he is looking for at a specific server, then scan the server when visiting it with his browser.

Microwave is a time- efficient device for heating and reheating of foods. Despite the fact that its effects on foods have been evaluated during a long period of time, without any more negative effects shown compared to conventional cooking, one third of the Swedish population believes (in 2010) it accounts for a higher loss of nutrition. This literature review aim to compile studies regarding how food is affected by cooking in microwave, with respect to cooking losses, nutrition, secondary metabolites as well as sensory and textural aspects and compare it with conventional cooking. The compilation shows that different combination of effect (W), time and amount of water during microwave cooking have different effects on foods. The contents of proteins, vitamin B and carbohydrates are generally higher after microwave cooking, while anti-nutritional substances are affected much less during conventional cooking. This also depends on if it is of animal or non-animal origin. However, for the majority of nutrition values the differences are quite small.

This paper seeks to discern the political factors that determine the results of negotiations in international cooperation. On the one hand, it makes a contribution to the broader theoretical debate on international regimes by combining regime theory and theories on globalisation into an integrated framework for the analysis of international policy results, or in this case treaties (theoretical objective). More generally, globalisation theory will help us understand why it has become important to initiate international cooperation, and regime theory to elucidate how these international cooperations emerge. To many observers, it is the large transnational corporations of the rich North, which have done best out of free trade. Through the huge influence they wield over governments at the WTO (World Trade Organisation), these corporations have won the freedom to move around the globe without restriction, making use of cheap labour, and locating wherever they can best tap into the largest and most lucrative markets.

In a society where children are getting a bigger influence over the family?s consumption and where more products for children are purchased, the market for children products has expanded. This growth is due to a higher amount of older parents which have a god economy and are choosing to spend more money on products for their children. Also the fact that parents use fashion products for children as a way to reflect their own status and that children are becoming more fashionable and aware of trends have contributed to the markets expansion. All together this leads to a grown importance of knowledge for marketers concerning the market.

Tylö AB is the leading manufactor of sauna cabins in Europe, but there is a lackof a sauna lightning produced by Tylö. The project of developing a new saunalightning series was assigned two students at the developmentengineeringprogram at Halmstad University. The main problem with lightning in the saunais the heat and security aspect. The selection fell on LED technology as thelightning source, thanks to its small measures and low heat emission.The work of constructing of a lightning armature which the capability of coolingdown the LED lightning was carried out during autumn ?06 and spring ?07.

Tylö AB is the leading manufactor of sauna cabins in Europe, but there is a lack of a sauna lightning produced by Tylö. The project of developing a new sauna lightning series was assigned two students at the developmentengineering program at Halmstad University. The main problem with lightning in the sauna is the heat and security aspect. The selection fell on LED technology as the lightning source, thanks to its small measures and low heat emission. The work of constructing of a lightning armature which the capability of cooling down the LED lightning was carried out during autumn ?06 and spring ?07.

The purpose of this literature review was to describe the paths of exposure and accumulation of organic pollutants into the tissues of farm animals. Organic pollutants can be spread in the environment by air and rainwater. Farm animals can be exposed to these pollutants for example by eating soil or contaminated plants. Many of the pollutants can then accumulate in the fat tissues of the body because of their lipophilic character. Brominated flame retardants and perfluorolated compounds are both pollutants of current interest.

In part this paper is a contribution to the ongoing Swedish discussion about our public structures. The discussion has picked up speed in the last years thanks to a government backed committee trying to come up with a suggestion to make our public sector more efficient. A big part of the debate is about the independence and work of our municipalities, what they should do, what they shouldn?t do and when the state should step in and take over. I make a theoretical investigation into one of these issues, the one about job creation.

In order to reach the environmental targets, set up by the EU, there are many measures taken to make Sweden more energy efficient. In the housing and real estate sector, an installation of an exhaust air heat pump that reuses the heat in the exhaust air in order to lower the amount of acquired energy, is an example of such an action. The recovered energy can then be used for heating of radiators and tap water. This report aims to evaluate and compare three different systems using exhaust air heat pumps regarding COP, degree of coverage and cost savings. This study was delimited to only account for apartment buildings.The theory chapter describes the different conditions and factors that affect a building?s energy balance.

Examensarbetet handlar om en jämförelsestudie av beräkningseffektivitet med avseende på energi- och tidsförbrukning mellan grafikkort och processorer i persondatorer och PlayStation 3.Problemet studeras för att göra allmänheten uppmärksam på att det går att lösa en del av energiproblematiken med beräkningar genom att öka energieffektiviteten av beräkningsenheterna.Undersökningen har genomförts på ett explorativt sätt och studerar förhållandet mellan processorer, grafikkort och vilken som presterar bäst i vilket sammanhang. Prestandatest genomförs med molekylberäkningsprogrammet F@H och med filkomprimeringsprogrammet WinRAR. Testerna utförs på MultiCore- och SingleCorePCs och PS3s av olika karaktär. I vissa test mäts effektförbrukning för att kunna räkna ut hur energieffektiva vissa system är.Resultatet visar tydligt hur den genomsnittliga effektförbrukningen och energieffektiviteten för olika testsystem skiljer sig vid belastning, viloläge och olika typer beräkningar..