This project was conducted during the spring semester 2013 at mechanical engineering program at University Halmstad. The project was conducted in collaboration with MPQ Consulting in Halmstad. MPQ Consulting is a newly established company looking to take step into the product development world. The company has already had ideas and existing products. One of the ideas is to construct and design a form of beach games whose rules are based on the volleyball rules.

During the middle of the 18th century the development of Toyota Production System, TPS, started in order to streamline the processes. TPS was based on the principles of assembly line production but unlike previous performers Toyota let the manufacturing be constantly affected by demand. At the end of the 18th century TPS was described by Womack and Jones in the book "The machine that changed the world - the story of lean producion" where TPS got the name lean. The principles behind lean is to maximize customer value and eliminate waste which means making products and services more valuable to the customer. 1Lean was for a long time a philosophy and an approach limited to industries and production based companies.

We were interested in catalogers as human beings and in their reaction to a changed working situation. In the light of the changes which have been made at the libraries during the nineties, we investigated why the very group catalogers reacted with an intense and engaged open debate at the same time as librarians with special competence didn t seem to react in this way. The open debate about the catalogers changed working conditions was held in Sweden, above all at BIBLIST, which is a forum for library-connected questions. This forum uses an email list made particularly for librarians. The situation of the librarians was, to a small extent, also discussed in publications made for the library line of business.

The parent-student-teacher conference presumes school responsibility of the development of the student. Teacher, student and parents are supposed to talk freely and in confidence, the conference should lead to a forward looking and long term plan. The parent-student-teacher conference should presume equality amongst the parties. The intention of this paper is to illuminate how the conference can be a way to clarify the process of learning. I intend to do this by showing the practice of four teachers, by making conclusions from their experiences they have made in their practice.

The structural rationalization of rural firms in Sweden has led to many new creative ways of developing companies. The agriculture sector is characterized by the need of capital in form of buildings, labor and inventory. The rationalization process has led to free capacity in rural firms when new technology make buildings and inventory not longer necessary for the production process. To get a better cost coverage this free capacity can be used to start-up new business areas that help the rural firm to growth.The study aims to identify factors that motives entrepreneurs in rural firms to develop new business areas. The purpose is also to analyze driving forces that lies behind development of rural firms and the forces that support or not support development in rural firms.The study is built upon five cases that all can be categorized as firms with different size and orientation.

There are plenty of exciting changes being developed in Tre Högar´s Park, which is located in the district of Linero, eastern Lund. A project group representing Linero If, Lugi Tennis and Linero/Östra Torn Health centre, has been created and is responsible for managing a development project of the Park. Their main focus is to create sports, exercise, health-promotion, health-care, recreation and rehabilitation facilities. They view the park area as having great potential and will transform it into a purpose built park for Health and Exercise. There are various authorities involved with and engaged in the scheme; aside from the project group, the municipality of Lund, The sport association of the handicapped and local schools are being consulted.

This study aims at examine what kind of interest the European Union (EU) have in promoting a democracy process in Eastern Europe. The study is a descriptive case study where the case Ukraine is used to draw general conclusions. The questions asked to pursue the aim are: why does the EU want to promote a democracy process in Ukraine, what kind of methods does the EU use  and why is Russia trying to prevent the EU-Ukraine development and instead supporting a Russia-Ukraine development. In this study an analytical model is created and used to analyze EU:s way in promoting democracy in Ukraine. The analyze model consists of six steps used to describe the general promotion of a democracy process and it?s applied in the empirical analysis.

This paper is a qualitative study on the influence of the residents in a special communitydwelling within the care system for elderly. The purpose of the study is to describe and analyse with a user perspective how particularly staff members but also a group of retired people living in this dwelling interpret and articulate the concept of resident influence. How the retirees can influence the design and the content of the activities and the organization. How today the residents influence is carried out with the ideas and visions of the future.My methods include qualitative structured, semi-structured and non-structured interviews within a general frame of a resident questionnaire. The staff members present the current situation and reflect on the reasons for obstacles for resident influence.The group of retired people who lives in structures originating in the Swedish long-term care system and homes for the elderly tends to adjust to given routines and express a low-voiced wish for increased influence.

This master?s thesis will try to describe the beginning and development towards a modern public library of the town library in Karlskrona between 1906 and 1959. The specific years refers to the year the library was established and the year it moved to the new library building in the centre of Karlskrona. The aim of the thesis has been to do this historical description and to look at the course from the perspective of the national policies and development for the Swedish modern public library. The thesis is based mainly on reports of the proceedings of the public library and other biographical documents and literature, which has been found in two local archives.

The objective with the study was to evaluate what key persons at LFV Group (Luftfartsverket) think about-presented core values and their implementation within the company. Another objective of the study was to describe and compare the process of implementation of core values and how this affects organization culture at two selected reference companies. A qualitative method was applied in the form of semi-structured interviews with key persons at Luftfartsverket and the other reference companies.As the result a four-step program is proposed to describe the implementation process of core values: presentation, introduction, realization and follow-up. Within the implementation process it is possible to distinguish another process, which is based on core values, - introduction of new employees. The implementation of core values has contributed towards the development of the organizational culture as well as creating a successful company governed by core values..

The main aim of this study is to examine the development policies of Sweden and the European Union from a postcolonial perspective. Sweden and the European Union are increasingly coming to be viewed as normative powers rather than military powers. So how does the colonial past of the western societies affect the policies of today? Are there any signs of the power structures of the past, and if so, how are these power structures manifested in the development policies of today? Since both Sweden and the European Union have come to be viewed as normative powers they are compared with each other to highlight their similarities and differences. The results of the study shows that both Sweden and the European Union can be seen as carriers of western values and interests.

A vulnerable group in society is people with ASD (autism spectrum disorders) or autism. This group seems to increase, mainly due to genetic factors but also environmental problems. Medical research has accelerated in the U.S. and Europe. The biggest problem for people with disabilities is the inability to communicate, both verbally and socially.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the causal relationship between bank sector development and economic growth in four Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway).Method: Our thesis is based on a quantitative method. The study consists of a compilation and analysis of key financial indicators that represent economic growth and bank sector development. A Granger causality test has been conducted on the time series in order to measure the causal link between economic growth and bank sector development.Theoretical framework: The study is based on the theory of endogenous growth and the causal relationship between bank sector development and economic growth also known as the demand following and supply leading hypothesis. Results: The results of the four countries are ambiguous. Except for Denmark, that follows the supply leading hypothesis, the remaining countries do not show a unanimous result..

New method for measuring road quality- A statisticalstudy of the relationship between road quality andsocioeconomic development A new tool with implications for road maintenance has the potential to yield statistical data for road quality in a large number of regions. This thesis investigates the possibility to develop a method, from this data, for evaluating the effects of road quality on socioeconomic development.The thesis is essentially divided into two parts. Part one looks to qualitatively establish the link between socioeconomic development and road quality and the second part focuses on how to develop a method for evaluating the effects of road quality on socioeconomic development. A method was devised using categorical data and a multinomial regression model. This method provides a comprehensive overview of the complex relationship between a variety of different variables.

My aim in this case study has been to create a method for creature design to test this method in a production and evaluate the results. To achieve this I studied and analyzed the methods of three concept artists and illustrators named James Gurney, Neville Page and Iain McCaig. From the analysis of these artist´s methods, combined with my own personal experience, a new method was formed. To test this method a creature was designed based on directives given by a game design group in the process of creating a table top role playing game in a fictitious world. These directives where given for the creature´s role and its living conditions.