This thesis, in the field of healthcare logistics, has been carried out at Hjärt- och Medicincentrum (HMC) at the University Hospital in Linköping during the fall and spring of 2012/2013. The thesis is done by two students at Linköping University at master?s level within the framework of Industrial Engineering and Management.As Sweden's county councils should not make a profit or loss, it is important that the councils are aware of how much care processes cost. Kardiologiska kliniken at HMC in Östergötland?s county council is one of the clinics that are profitable.

Abstract. Aim: The aim of this study is to determine certain health, demographic and socioeconomic factors that affect the costs for specialized health care between the municipalities within the Västra Götaland region. Method: The method is explorative and analytical. The costs for specialized health care was divided into three different subgroups; independent somatic specialized health care, specialized health care provided by private practices or outside the region and psychiatric specialized health care. The data was age-standardized.

AbstractTitle: External communication and brand strategies in Swedish municipalities? Author: Philip Hagne & Einar Svensson? Tutor: Jessica Gustafsson? Purpose: The aim of this thesis was to study and obtain greater understanding on how Swedish municipalities use external communication and branding strategies to gain and attract more residents. The key questions to be answered in this thesis were: What does the external communication look like in the selected municipalities? Are the selected municipalities trying to establish their own brand? What does the work on creating the brand look like??Method/Material: This thesis is based on material collected trough interviews with people working with external communication in eleven swedish municipalities. The selected municipalities where divided into two groups based on their negative or positive population growth between 2005 and 2012.

The purpose of this essay is to identify costs for providing First-line and Second-line support, and then allocate these cost to different goods and services (cost objects) being supported. The thesis also intends to improve the overall cost awareness in IT settings..

This essay is a case study of how two non-profit organizations, in the same line of business work with external communication and new media such as Internet and social media (Facebook and Twitter).Both these organizations are located in different countries and the purpose of the case study is also to find out if the differences in their work methods in communication depend on organizational or cultural differences. The case study was conducted in the organizations Sverige Amerika Centret in Karlstad, Sweden and The Swedish Council of America in Minneapolis, US. A qualitative approach executed through interviews and a qualitative content analysis of the organizations annual report from 2010. The result of the interviews and the document content analysis shows that there are differences in the way these organizations handle their work with external communications and new media. One of the organizations uses new media more actively in their work with communication and through that channel creates a relationship with its external audiences. The theories that has been used for this case study is Organization communication, Intercultural communication, Public Relations and Organization culture. Keywords: external communication, new media, culture and employees..

This thesis, in the field of healthcare logistics, has been carried out at Hjärt- och Medicincentrum (HMC) at the University Hospital in Linköping during the fall and spring of 2012/2013. The thesis is done by two students at Linköping University at master?s level within the framework of Industrial Engineering and Management.As Sweden's county councils should not make a profit or loss, it is important that the councils are aware of how much care processes cost. Kardiologiska kliniken at HMC in Östergötland?s county council is one of the clinics that are profitable.

As demand for renewable energy is increasing rapidly, the market for biomass pellets is expected to continue to grow in the near future. Most of the new raw materials that are discussed for pellet production have one thing in common; the production costs will increase compared to using traditional raw materials such as sawdust and planer shavings. The aim of this thesis is to investigate to what degree increased use of new raw materials for pellet production will affect the general pellet prices in Sweden and to survey what plans Swedish pellet producers have concerning new raw materials. To investigate the raw material situation of the Swedish pellet producers an industry survey was performed. Literature studies were also made on previous research in the subject field. Calculations of the production costs for pellets were done for the raw materials sawdust, wet sawmill chips and energy wood respectively. New raw materials are already used by the large-scale pellet producers in Sweden.

Evaluation of machinery costs is necessary for selecting appropriate farm machinery. Timeliness cost due to untimely operations is an important component of machinery costs. Timeliness costs can be high for crop sprayers, since pesticide application must be carried out within a short time interval. This Master thesis investigated the timeliness cost and the probability of a suitable workday for spraying. Timeliness factors were estimated for four different crops (oats, spring wheat, winter wheat and barley) using historical weed trial data.

This thesis, in the field of healthcare logistics, has been carried out at Hjärt- och Medicincentrum (HMC) at the University Hospital in Linköping during the fall and spring of 2012/2013. The thesis is done by two students at Linköping University at master?s level within the framework of Industrial Engineering and Management.As Sweden's county councils should not make a profit or loss, it is important that the councils are aware of how much care processes cost. Kardiologiska kliniken at HMC in Östergötland?s county council is one of the clinics that are profitable.

Competition of spruce fiber raw materials has increased dramatically in the last few years, leading to the fact that transportation costs in the current situation represents a much larger share of the total raw material cost. The Holmen-owned pulp industry Hallsta Paper Mill's location on the coast also constitutes a problem, because of the lack of raw material, which is much larger there, than for a pulp mill located in the hinterland. For a coastal industry it?s therefore natural to import much of the raw material by boat or to buy it from the timber terminals, in order to maintain good profitability. The purpose of this study was to analyze how the size of Hallsta Paper Mill timber supply area, without competition, with competition and with terminal use, affects the company ?s transport costs.

The purpose of this thesis is to map out and investigate how the banking sector affects a customer?s willingness to change bank, and what the switching costs are for a customer when making these changes. A case study was performed through qualitative and quantitative questionnaires and interviews. The qualitative part was carried out to create hypotheses. The hypotheses was tested in a quantitative survey to be able to either accepted or rejected these them.

This thesis has been made in cooperation with Forsheda Stålverktyg AB which develops and manufactures injection moulds and diecasting tools. The main concern has been their Trading-system which provides them with considerable amount of quality lost function.Focus has to however be put on the analysis of the Trading-system due to the fact that this has previously meant various quality issues for the company.This thesis treats quality assurance of the Trading-system, identification of the problems in the process and improvements of these problems.Quality assurance is carried out when a company detects that their quality based costs become too high. Quality based cost are? the costs that would disappear if a company's products and its different operational processes were absolute? (Sörqvist, 2001 p.30, free translation from Swedish). High quality based costs often result in increased quality problems, which can lead to substantial economic loss for the company.This work has resulted in a thorough review of the Trading-system whereupon problems have been identified.

The work of the board in owner-managed firms often differ compared to the work of the board in large listed companies. Since the owners are working in different roles, the board in owner-managed firms might discuss topics outside the typical boards agenda, such as questions relating to ownership structure and operational matters. This thesis examines what external board members can contribute with in owner-managed firms, and which the most frequent difficulties are for the owners when deciding to recruit external board members. Through qualitative interviews, three owner-managed firms have been studied, which together with two expert interviews and five seminars, creates the empirics. In the analysis, the empirics are compared to what the earlier theory states.

This paper investigates the internal product costing system in one of the Swedish banks with the purpose to evaluate the quality of its product costs and possible implications on decision making. The study shows that the current system distorts product costs by, among other things, using relative allocation of costs and time and by allocating all costs to individual units of products. We therefore propose an alternative product costing system, which mainly draws on ABC theory but is also adapted to the specific needs of service companies and of the Bank. This proposal is intended as a solution in this particular case and not to be generalized in other contexts. We hope however to add to the understanding of why more complex costing systems, such as the ones based on ABC theory are, according to previous studies, not widely used in practice.

The purpose of this research was to examine what motivates and influences an individual to invest in a project or company through equity-based crowdfunding. The intention was therefore to identify internal and external motivation factors and examine how external social factors such as the Internet, other individuals? investment decisions and interaction in social groups affect an individual when he or she invests through equity-based crowdfunding. The results showed that both internal and external motivation factors are important components of an investment through equity-based crowdfunding. External motivators proved to be for example yields and helping entrepreneurs.