The ski resort is a business unlike any other. While providing the customer with a service, it produces the service in a manner that in many respects resemble the traditional producing company. Therefore, since the challenges facing the ski resort are a mixture of what can be found in these different environments, this study aims to investigate the applicability of Lean principles in this context. With a qualitative approach based on direct observation, combined with survey data from 2819 respondents, we evaluate the expected effects on customer value of ten commonly defined Lean principles. The study finds that although Lean theory can help disseminate customers throughout the resort and provide greater transparency, the nature of the operations calls for caution.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the problems in multilingual thesauri, with a focus on the problem of conceptual equivalence between different languages. This study compares the problems and solutions that have been carried out in the Eurovoc multilingual thesaurus with the ISO 5964 ISO 5964 is a guideline for establishment and development of multilingual thesauri. The Swedish descriptors in the subject area "education and communication", from Eurovoc have been observed and compared with the guidelines recommendations. The results show that, the majority of the investigated Swedish descriptors do not present any problem. Most of the terms that are used as descriptors are found in dictionaries and glossaries or appear with high frequency in Swedish websites.

AimThe aim of this study is to give a picture of how the brand of Bollnäs GIF apprehends according to the sports club, the municipality of Bollnäs, the Swedish Bandy Association and the local business owners. Following questions has been used: How does the brand of Bollnäs GIF apprehend? Which existing soft value has the brand? What does the association contribute for the community, for local business owners and for the local development? How can the association develop the brand best in the future?MethodThe study is based upon ten interviews with persons representing organization that is concerned. These are: Bollnäs GIF, the municipality of Bollnäs, the Swedish Bandy Association and local business owners. I have analyzed the results compared to selected brand theories.ResultsThe existing value of the sports club-brand is the history and tradition that lies within the brand and the communion and the commitment the sports club creates in the Bollnäs.

AbstractWork to develop the Eurocodes started in 1975 by the European Commission adopted a program to eliminate trade barriers within the construction area. The goal was to create common European design standards that would replace the member countries' own rules. Eurocodes will replace The National Board of Housing Building and Planning, National Rail, The National Road Administration and other agencies' calculation rules for the buildings structures. The transition to the use of Eurocodes looks like this:Eurocodes set to Swedish standards  between 2002 ? 2007They can be used parallel with national standards 2006 - 2009 The total transition is at the end of 2010/2011.Right now is going on a lot of work for replacement of the existing standards to Eurocodes.  The transition to the new calculations` standards, many construction companies and consulting firms facing a big changes and competitions.

The first browser war took place during the second half the 1990s, and Internet Explorer cameout as the winner over Netscape Navigator. Today a new browser war is being fought withmany competitors and the future is uncertain. The purpose of the thesis is to find out how theweb browser market has developed since the start of the previous conflict, and we ask ourselveshow it will continue to develop in the future. This is accomplished with, among otherthings, interviews, tests and already existing statistics. The thesis' conclusions shows that theweb browser market has developed in a positive way from several perspectives, both for theusers as well as for the web developers.

In this essay, I employ Judith Butlers theories of gender performativity to examine the construction of the monstrosity in Howard Phillips Lovecraft?s two works The Outsider and The Thing on the Doorstep. Focusing on the character?s monstrous attributes, how they are seen by themselves, by others and not least by the reader, I examine how their monstrosity is created and strengthened by dehumanizing processes. I argue that Lovecraft through his narrative technique complicates the relation between monstrosity and humanity in his characters, the result of which is a reader left to determine how monstrous, or human, the creature really is.

The purpose of this essay is to draw attention to a rather new phenomena, virtual bullying amongst young people. Bullying has been known for a long time but today, bullying has found new ways of expression. New technology, which includes the Internet and cell phones, has given the bullies new weapons to use in their bullying.The study I have done has been qualitative and contained interviews. Represents from two communities, Playahead and LunarStorm, and two organisations, BRIS and Friends, all together five persons (two persons from LunarStorm) have been interviewed and had the opportunity to tell me their view on virtual bullying.The results show that young people see the new technologies as a valuable prolongation of their reality that they won?t give up if they don?t need to.

The purpose with this essay is to study how companies use the repositioning process and identify the risks involved from a business perspective. We have chosen to base our essay on the following research questions:What reasons are there for a company to initiate a repositioning?, What does it mean for companies to implement a repositioning?, What are the risks with a repositioning?We have used a qualitative research method and have chosen to interview six respondents which in various ways are actively working with brand repositioning. Our study has been implemented with and deductive character.The most important conclusion that we observed after implementing our study is that repositioning is a high-risk project. Instead of changing their entire brand image, companies should instead make small changes and revitalize the brand by developing the strength that already exist.

This study investigates if, and in that case, how design theory is applied in practice in the web development field. Prior research has focused on methods used in the web development field. We wanted to study the designers role in a web design process by comparing existing designer roles with design theory literature. We did qualitative interviews with two practitioners at two different communication agencies in northern Sweden. Based on our qualitative data and literature review we have concluded that a designer has to devote a lot of energy on requirements engineering in order to develop a clear understanding of the design situation..

The purpose of this study was to investigate the levels of social distance used by the librarians and users in the virtual reference interview. With a conversational analysis and applied politeness theory 49 chat transcripts where analysed in order to answer the question of how the interlocutors positioned themselves regarding the social distance between them. By identifying what communicative strategies where used the following results were found. Generally the social distance between librarians and users is low in the Swedish virtual reference interview. Even though both parties used informal and casual language the results indicate that the librarians face wants were valued slightly higher than the users which were illustrated by a some what higher social distance in the stages of the conversations when the librarians face was under most threat.

This study deals with teachers ideas about the physical environment of a mobile preschool and how it affects children?s learning. The essay describes how the preschool bus is decorated and how a normal day works in the mobile bus. The survey was based on the following questions:Are there disadvantages and advantages in terms of physical environment in the mobile preschool from an educator based perspective?What are the teacher?s thoughts about the impact on children?s learning in terms of the physical environment on the bus?Summary: To answer my questions I have participated in activities during the day and I have used the interviews to find out the teachers thoughts.

Previous studies have shown that there exists a gap between purchase intention and behavior in consumption situations. This gap is especially prevalent for sustainable or green products and even more so in terms of sustainable apparel consumption. Therefore, the adoption of sustainable fashion remains low as fast fashion dominates the industry. A counter-movement for mass consumption - access-based consumption - has reached the apparel industry and in Sweden we see it in the form of clothing libraries. This qualitative thesis uses in-depth interviews to uncover the feelings of seven consumers towards the idea of accessing rather than owning their clothing as a more sustainable consumption form, factoring in the strong identity connection that we have to our clothes and how this affects their perceptions.

As new ways of using computers are constantly being developed, other ways of interacting are made possible. One of the most desired types of interaction with computers is a touch-screen where the user can actually organize everything simply by using the fingertips. The purpose of this project is to enhance an existing framework with an application that works with a touch-screen device. The application is to be used as a tool for presentational usage. The result is an application where the user by simple means can use a touch-screen to hold a professional presentation.

This thesis has treated a three-axis robot which task is to serve a larger test machine tomove the modules to be tested, from the storage to the test site. The robot is composed ofthree linear actuators; two standard components of ball screw type and a custom-builtactuator of trapezoidal type. The work has mainly focused on the custom-built device to seeif it could be replaced with a standard component. Part of the work has been to look into thepicking tool and to see if there are any possibilities to improve its function.The report presents two different proposals which I decided to call Robot 1 and Robot 2 andthey aim to address the problems arising in the purpose-built linear unit and the X-axislinearity problems. Robot 1 focuses on eliminating the problems that arise around therobot's X-axis, with such simple means as possible and without making excessive materialchanges.

The Earth and everything else in the universe was created in the Big Bang around 14 billion years ago. A point with tremendous density and mass began to expand and more and more atoms began to form. From the first and lightest like hydrogen and helium to heavier atoms such as iron and eventually gold. The formation of the Earth occurred about 4.6 billion years ago and so the first gold atoms were concentrated only here. It is however believed that much later in Earth's history an extra supply of gold occurred thanks to massive meteorite bombardments.