The role of the quality manager has evolved from being a quality controller to work with a more global business. Within many organizations in Sweden, however, the traditional role of the quality manager's remains and the tasks categorized as quality control still takes up most of the quality manager's time. The survey conducted as part of this master thesis shows that the quality manager in most businesses has multiple roles in addition to the role of quality manager, which can create a role conflict. One consequence of this is that each improvement is not given priority due to time constraints. Although the importance of a clear and committed leadership is the key for succeeding as the quality manager.

Since the introduction of the European citizenship in the Maastricht treaty, social rights havetaken a back seat to the economic and political elements. Nevertheless, over the past yearssocial issues have been increasingly included on the agenda following the universalrecognition of challenges resulting from further economic integration and demographicchange. The extensive research on European social policy so far tend to focus on initiativesput forward by the European Commission, and offers little to explain the multitude of lines ofreasoning on how far EU social policy should be taken or why it still remains one of the leastdeveloped policy areas. By examining plenary debates in the European Parliament concerningfamily policy, this Bachelor thesis aims to describe the complex of problems connected to afurther development of the social dimension of the European citizenship.The analysis finds that the most imminent problems impeding an expansion of the EU familypolicy lie not only in the many clashes of opinions between advocates of the various existingwelfare models, but also in the conflicts of interests and the different levels of ambitionbetween EU institutions - most notably the Commission and the European Parliament..

Biofuels are getting more important as EU plans to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. Because of that Sveaskog has chosen to invest in developing the handling process of logging residue. The company has a joined organisation for handling both round wood and logging residue. They are also working at integrating the forwarding of the logging residue with the rest of the harvesting team. Sveaskog is currently extracting 44 % of the available amount of logging residue.

During 2006 SNVDB (the national road data base for forestry) is being introduced to Holmen Skog. This data base contains all information about Holmen Skogs road systems. The information will then be used in different kinds of optimisation models which only produce correct and reliable results if the input data are of the adequate quality. Today there are reasons to believe that road data is of various qualities. The forest roads are often in a bad condition and have to be improved before a planned harvest. The cost of maintenance and construction of new roads is a large part of the total harvesting cost.

Research suggests that society's vulnerability to natural disasters along coasts could increase as a result of climate change, which is likely to lead to elevated sea levels and possibly an increase in the occurance of meteorological phenomena such as storms and tropical cyclones. Following the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, both of which received considerable media attention, empirical data has indicated that coastal vegetation might be able to protect and reduce damages to coastal communities during tsunami events and tropical cyclones.The aim of the essay has been to study the function of coastal ecosystems as protection against tsunami waves and storms from a risk management perspective, meaning that I have, through an overview of scientific articles, compiled current research on how coastal ecosystems can attenuate storm surges and tsunami waves, and analysed how this knowledge can be put into practice in coastal communities from a risk management perspective, i.e. if coastal ecosystems are a viable risk reduction measure, are practically applicable, and if so, how they could be applied.There is empirical evidence suggesting that coastal ecosystems, particularly mangroves, can reduce the strength of a tsunami wave, but full scientific consensus on this issue has not yet been reached. With regard to protection against storm surges, there is extensive scientific evidence that coastal vegetation can mitigate damages and reduce the height of a storm surge, although the wave has to traverse several kilometres inland through thick vegetation for the protection to be effective. A synthesis in the form of a figure regarding the many physical factors that influence wave development through coastal ecosystems has been created in an attempt to simplify and explain the phenomenon.The conservation and restoration of coastal ecosystems can be justified from a risk management perspective, but planting new forest belts for the purpose of disaster mitigation is quite unrealistic and can rarely be sustainable, since, for protection to be effective, the forest belt must extend several kilometres inland from the coast, and would thus likely prove difficult to implement along coastal societies..

This qualitative study examines how emergency people are framed in Swedish evening-, and local newspapers during the forest fire in Va?stmanland, Sweden 2014. The study also includes if there is any difference between the framing due to the location of the newspaper. The study is based on qualitative text analysis. The theoretical basis is representation, framing theory, media image, media logic and a few conceptions from crisis communication theory.

Fire has historically been of great ecological importance in the boreal forests of Sweden. The forest fire regime has, however, varied between different parts of the country. The objective of this thesis is therefore to investigate the fire history in Fulufjället National Park and, on this basis, give suggestions for future fire management. The reconstruction of fire history was done by cross-dating fire scars in samples taken from living and dead Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). Local fire chronologies were established at 17 points in the forests in and around Fulufjället National Park by cross-dating fire scars on 54 samples. The oldest year-ring dated from year 968.

This study focuses on how the idea of sustainability is dealt with by companies, how the idea changes when moving through a company structure and how the different individuals interpret the idea. To date, many different studies have been written on the subject of sustainability, but few share the perspective addressed in this particular study. This case study was formed at a paper mill in the central part of Sweden. Semi-structured interviews with employees working on different hierarchical levels, within the same company, were chosen in order to get an insight into how the idea of sustainability is implemented throughout an entire company. The interviews have been transcribed to help identify contrasting patterns.This study has shown that the idea of sustainability, and its context within society, differs from how the idea is perceived in the organization.

This thesis analyzes the media debates generated by the election of Omar Mustafa to the board of the social democratic party, and the appointment of the conservative Minister of Labour, Elisabeth Svantesson. More specifically, the aim is to analyze newspaper material through a discourse analyze, to see if and how religious affiliation effects the possibilities to act as a political representative. Theories of othering and intersectionality serve as theoretical points of departure. Further, chains of equivalence from Laclau and Mouffe?s discourse theory are used to study how categories as ?us? and ?the other? are constructed in the material, and how these processes of categorization relate to the intersection of religion, gender and ethnicity.

This qualitative study examines how emergency people are framed in Swedish evening-, and local newspapers during the forest fire in Va?stmanland, Sweden 2014. The study also includes if there is any difference between the framing due to the location of the newspaper. The study is based on qualitative text analysis. The theoretical basis is representation, framing theory, media image, media logic and a few conceptions from crisis communication theory.

In this modern period, societal and religious groups are strongly divided regarding the acceptability of abortion. Despite so many attempts by various groups to find a middle ground, the debate on abortion still remains largely polarized, at its most dramatic point with the extreme conservatives claiming abortion to be the moral equivalent of murder and the extreme liberals see it as devoid of moral import. And this polarization is due to the legal battle that continues to shadow moral discussions. An acceptance of an ethical nuance will here play as a concession on the deeply contested question of whether abortion should be a legally protected option for a woman, and to an extent blame for the continued crudeness which can be laid at the doorstep of a moral theory itself. Apparently, the ethical literature on abortion has focused almost exclusively on the tiniest moral assessment on whether and when abortion is morally permissible.

Nature conservation agreement (NCA) is a way to voluntarily protect and manage nature for limited time-periods. The agreement is settled between the government and a landowner. All public authorities can represent the government but it is only the Swedish Forest Administration who does that regularly (because it is the only authority with economic resources for that purpose). Therefore, NCAs are almost only used to protect forested nature. The government agencies have experienced NCAs for about ten years and it is now time to examine how they are applied in the forests. This study is based on a computerized questionnaire to the persons responsible for the LEKO-projekt.

The purpose of this work has been to investigate if there are any differences in the valuation process at infringements when highway and railway are built. The work has mainly been concentrated on the negotiation process in which The National Railway Department (Banverket) and The National Road Administration (Vägverket) try to get agreements with the land owners. The agreement includes compensation for infringement effects that affects the landowner?s property. The National Road Department uses the road law (Väglagen) when a highway shall be built.

This qualitative study is about the differences and similarities between the organization Friends and schools? methods to prevent bullying. Aggression, bullying and discomfort in schools result in that many students do not dare to go to school because of their fear that they might get attacked and become systematically bullied. Bullying is a universal and persistent problem. In this study the reader will receive a better understanding and get an insight into the problems that teachers and students experience and struggle with every day in dealing with bullying in schools.

In industrial control systems PID-control remains the prevalent strategy, also for processes that would benefit from model based control. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate whether model based control can be readily implemented in an industrial control system. To this end a simulated surge tank with a simulated industrial control system is studied. For evaluation two scenarios with specified objectives are selected.Following a review of LQR and versions of MPC, Predictive Functional Control (PFC) is considered the most suitable for implementation. PFC is a form of MPC developed with industrial applications in mind and therefore has several advantages for implementation in an industrial control system.