The Swedish public procurement correspond to approximately 400 milliard Swedish crowns every year which corresponds to about a fourth of the Swedish Gross National Product. Setting proper demands in the procurement is a useful tool to drive the development towards more environmentally adapted products and provisions. The Act on Public Procurement (Lagen om offentlig upphandling, 1992:1528) gives the municipalities opportunities to consider environmental properties during the procurement. This combined literature and empirical study investigates the experiences made by the three municipalities Ludvika, Borlänge and Smedjebacken during the process of certifying their school kitchens as organic in cooperation with KRAV. The main conclusion is that without compassion and curiosity for developing a green public procurement changes can be hard to implement.

In Sweden plans to build high speed railways have been around since the early 1990s and the planshave developed to be more precised since. The future Swedish high-speed rail network is supposedto consist of two lines. Götalandsbanan; from Stockholm to Gothenburg, and Europabanan fromJönköping through the Öresund Region to Hamburg.The description of the aim to build high-speed railways in Sweden has in former reports always beento achieve rapid passenger traffic between big Scandinavian cities and Europe. There are almostnothing mentioned about the possibilities of high-speed transports of cargo on these railways. Thisstudy aims to clarify the freight transport market for Götalandsbanan and Europabanan.Today there is only one transport system with high-speed freight trains.

Two of the main approach roads into the city of Enköping are Salavägen and Stockholmsvägen. They are connected to each other through the street Bangårdsgatan in the roundabout Salatullen and crossing Fannakorset, respectively. These crossings are from time to time heavily loaded, which is why the municipality plan for a new street in parallel to Bangårdsgatan. The traffic will then be spread out and is thereby reducing the density. The new street is actually an extension of the existing Mästergatan, a side street to Salavägen, to the east and connecting it to Stockholmsvägen or a street nearby.The purpose of this Master thesis is to show how the new street can be drawn in order to discharge the traffic in the area between the roundabout Salatullen and the crossing Fannakorset.

Electricity production from renewable energy resources such as wind energy and photovoltaics is variable. Integration of these intermittent resources into the electricity system leads to new challenges in how to manage imbalance between supply and demand on the grid.One way to meet these challenges is to develop so-called smart grid solutions. One idea, called demand response, is to adjust the amount or timing of energy consumption, e.g. by control of household appliances, to provide flexibility that could be used to balance the grid. In aggregate, when applied to many units across the system, large volumes of energy could be made available when needed and this grid flexibility can be used as a product on the electricity regulation market.Despite the potential benefits, the number of demand response bids is currently low.

SCA is the largest private owned forest owner in Sweden, with an ownership of 2 million hectares of productive forestland. To manage the planning of such large areas and to fit the traditional organization structure of a Swedish forest company, the planning approach is subdivided into three stages; strategic, tactical and operational. The strategic part, based on a statistic sample of stands, returns a harvest level estimate which should then be implemented at actual sites in the tactical part. This procedure can lead to incompatible solutions as the strategic solution is not necessarily possible to translate into actual sites in the tactical plan. The geographic aspect is important in tactical planning due to the large costs for moving equipment and maintenance of a large number of forest roads.

Term: Spring term 2007Study objects: Reitan Servicehandel AB, Vi-butikerna, ICA Sverige ABPurpose: The purpose of this study is to analyse how procurement is used as a strategy to achieve better competitive strength, within the retail food industry.Theoretical: The theoretical chapter illustrates different procurement organisations, multiple and single sourcing, brand equity, consumer behaviour and involvement, Efficient Consumer Response including supply chain and category management and finally Demand Chain Management.Method: For the case studies, three food retail companies have been interviewed: Reitan Servicehandel AB, Vi-butikerna and ICA AB. To illustrate how consumer behaviour influences retail food market, several secondary consumer research studies have been analysed.Conclusions: The results indicate that the procurement organisation can achieve a better competitive strength by a centralised organisation, which make it possible to improve conditions of terms when ordering higher purchase volumes. The sourcing strategies can improve a company?s power within the supply chain. All companies within the study had a very good knowledge about consumer behaviour.

One of the most important components of a harvester is the crane. Most harvester cranes are only possible to pivot (or horizontally rotate) at the crane pillar. Cranab in Vindeln, Sweden, has developed a new type of harvester crane which has an extra pivot point on the outer boom. This makes it possible to reach around residual trees, easing thinning work in dense stands. The aim of the study was to analyze if the use of a pivoting outer boom (POB) crane gave an increase in thinning production and if there were any differences in time consumption between the work elements for the POB crane and a conventional crane. A Valmet 911.3 equipped with a POB crane was used in the study.

Holmen Skog has only five out of 70 wood buyers who are women, This report is seen as a step in the process towards gender balance in the company. This is a problem that is equal over the entire forest industry in Sweden. They all think that sexual equal workplaces are very important to remain competitive, see things from different perspectives and development of the company. The survey was done by sending out questionnaires to all women who work and have worked as a wood buyer at Holmen, and as many men of both categories. These four categories became a total of twenty persons. To map the industry another questionnaire was sent out to the six largest forest companies in Sweden. The survey found that female wood buyers not finished their work earlier than men did, as they thought before.

The problems around and the planning of wood flow is some of the most complex issues in the forest-sector. The experience and overview of the single employees is crucial for the possibility of correct tactical and economical decision-making. The increasing demand of savings and shorter reaction-times with greater flexibility in the wood-supply-chain, makes solutions and aids for improved effectiveness in the work and processes according to wood-flow urgent. Holmen Skog is starting to develop a new forest-road-management-system. The system will facilitate the work according to construction, improvements and updating the standard of roads.

The aim of this study was to develop a simple model for calculating stock costs for bio fuel at Billerud Karlsborg and subsequently recommending a suitable stock level of bio fuel. The stock components considered in the model are GROT (branches and tops), bark, dry wood chips, raw wood chips from barking and sawdust. The calculations are based on a probability distribution of historical deviations between ordered and delivered volumes. The model presents two different ways to manage the supply in case of irregular deliveries. The first way is to stock enough volume to cover the deviations and the second way is to compensate with a quick purchase from the spot market (at extra high purchase prices).

Fog is a small-scale weather phenomenon that are fascinating to people. However, the presence of fog in road traffic reduces the visibility and increases the risk of road accidents. By the Swedish Road Weather Information System (VViS), the safety on roads could ameliorate and road accidents caused by fog and other weather hazards could be prevented. Fog is however a complex and usually local phenomenon, why fog formation generally is not easy to predict. For that reason, a statistical mapping of fog, especially along a motorway with high traffic volumes, could be useful in planning to prevent road accidents.

Modern semiconductor design methods makes it possible to design increasingly complex system-on-a-chips (SOCs). Testing such SOCs becomes highly expensive due to the rapidly increasing test data volumes with longer test times as a result. Several approaches exist to compress the test stimuli and where hardware is added for decompression. This master?s thesis presents a test data compression method based on a modified facsimile code.

Background: In the past 10 years private label has increased significantly in the Swedish grocery market. This is an important strategic event, which is a great challenge to suppliers as it causes stiff competition. To handle this situation an increasing number of suppliers have to make the decision whether to produce private label or not.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to find and analyse factors that influence suppliers in the Swedish grocery market to produce private label. On this basis we intend to confirm or develop existing theories within the field of study.Research method: The study has a qualitative approach where empirical data has been gathered through interviews with suppliers and retailers in the Swedish grocery market.Results: This study has identified factors that underlie suppliers? decision to produce private label.

Background Atelectasis is a commun respiratory complication related to general anesthesia and may contribute to pneumonia and acute respiratory failure. Atelectasis apear within 10 minutes after anesthetization and occur in 90% or more anesthezied patients regardless of age and gender. The aim of this study was to indentify if there are any evidence for which methods are ultimate or are most efficacious to reduce and prevent the formation of atelectasis.                                                                                                          Methods This study is a descriptive litterature study where 28 scientific studies have been indentified for review and analysis.                                                                                                               ResultsThe use of 100% oxygen during the induction of anesthesia favors the developement of atelectasis. This can be prevented by preoxygenation with oxygen content of 100% combined with a PEEP of 6-10 cmH2O. When free airway is secured, oxygenation with 100% was found to be unnecessary.

Personal archives are a largely neglected subject in archival theory. Among the consequences of this is the absenceof any general established or formalized practices when it comes to arrangement and description. Thisstudy opposes the notion that an archival institution without formal systems of arrangement and description doesnot order and describe archives in accordance with a general conceptual framework of a correct order. Supportingitself on the anthropological theory of Mary Douglas on dirt and cleanliness, it studies the implicit notions oforder that can be found in the archival descriptions of the personal archives kept by the Swedish national archives.Several patterns where revealed by the study: among them the primacy of quantity stood out. The vaguesystem of categories based on Martin Grass description model appears only to be employed loyally where quantitiesof the particular categories are such that they constitute complete volumes, which seem to be the cardinaljustifier of categorical division within the archive.