Due to a constantly increasing competitive pressure it is of great importance to constantly strive for improvements in order to gain competitive advantages. Lean Production is a concept that has been introduced with the aim to minimize waste and increase profitability. The purpose of this report is therefore to investigate how to perform effective planning according to the principles of Lean Production, in companys with customer exclusive products, through a case study at Sandvik Mining and Construction (SMC), and to investigate how SMC kan improve their planning of drifting rods at the production unit in Sandviken.The study started by creating a theoretical framework, to describe the subject planning and planning based on Lean Production. This frame work constituted the base for the case study which took place at Sandvik Mining and Construction, and also for the model and planning tool that has been introduced.The result of the study is partly a general model with factors that contribute to a more effective planning. These factors has beed identifed as SMED, which focuses on reducing set up times and in the end to facilitate the planning.

In this study we have investigated how care users in a nursing home experience their possibilities for influence and treatment from the staff. The study was conducted through focus group interviews with six participants who we met on four occasions. Questions the study departs from are: How do users experience their opportunity to influence? How do the users experience the treatment from the staff? The study has a qualitative approach and has been analyzed by means of symbolic interactionism, with an emphasis on the Self. Our results demonstrate that in situations of good treatment there is also a good influence.

Abstract"The war on terror" has resulted in numerous exceptions from the constitutional order. This thesis is an attempt to give empirical support to Georgio Agambens theory that these exceptions should be regarded as a constant element in modern societies based on a constitutional order. The results of the case study of the empirical exceptions in the American context give Agambens theory validity. The exception is a reappearing phenomenon, which implies that the constitutional order is fragile. What then is it that makes the legal norms fragile? In this thesis I will discuss the causality of moral panic.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how a local community, and those who dwell within its borders, are affected when a large scale windmill park is planned in its immediate vicinity. I have used a qualitative approach and conducted semi structured interviews to gather empirical data. The study took place in a small Swedish village named Svartnäs, situated in the region Dalarna.I have used the concept of community as a symbolic construction (Cohen 1984), that together with the theory of structuration (Giddens 1984) and the notion of expert system (Giddens 1996) served as my main theoretical perspectives.Even though the windmill park is not built yet, its impact on the people and the local community of Svartnäs has been considerable. In the traces of the new windmill park new options and constraints, that will play an important role in the lives of the people who dwell in Svartnäs, are arising. The windmill project is enlarging old conflicts and is creating a divided village.

Th is thesis is about how to create communicative images. It is mainly for landscape architects. With communicative images, I mean images created with the purpose to communicate a proposal or idea in a direct way to. By only looking at the image, the viewer should get an idea of what the proposal entails. A communicative image should also create an interest in the proposal.

The aim of this study is to examine social workers' and social work students' attitudes towards people living with hiv in Sweden. I will also examine if there is a connection between knowledge and attitudes. The questions at issue are how social workers' and social work students' attitudes can assume to influence on their professional practice and what causes can affect their attitudes towards people living with hiv. The study is based on a qualitative method. The methods have been: conversational interviews with five social workers, who work with family issues and integration, and a focused group interview with four social work students.

Driveability analysis of terrain data offers an important technique for decision support for all kinds of movements in the terrain. The work described in this report uses a high resolution digital terrain model generated from the laser radar data and further processed by the Category Viewer program, and information from the Real Estate Map. Properties of features found in a filtering process are calculated and compared with a set of rules in a knowledge base to get a driveability cost. This cost is then visualized in a graphical user interface. An evaluation of what driveability is and what it is affected by is performed, and a general cost function is developed, which can be used even if not all relevant information is available.

As a starting point the society is more enlightened and has gained a greater awareness about the gender power structures and its different forms. Present research shows the continuous development into other shapes and comes into different expressions that might be unrecognised. In order to gain knowledge about the present structure of the gender power structure system, the aim of this study was to investigate framing of female and male politicians in media. The main question asked was: ?are there framing differences in the portraits of the male and female politicians?? In order to achieve results articles in the biggest Swedish daily newspaper were examined.

The purpose of my study is to explore teachers reasoning regarding the motivation of students in religious education. I investigate the teachers' expectations of the students' behaviors which are being judged by the teachers, in order to assess whether the students their classes are motivated or not.                      In order to present views of the teachers? reasoning, the study uses qualitative method and is based on interviews, conducted with eight different high school teachers.The results show that teachers tend to expect the motivation of the students to contradict their own expectations before starting a course or they presume that the expectations are going to be confirmed in class. Furthermore teachers seem to have preconceived ideas regarding how motivated or un-motivated students behave in class.

The purpose ot this study is to investigate how two teachers of fifth grade say they are working with reading comprehension in their teaching. Furthermore the aim is to investigate how the teachers' instruction in reading cmprehension expresses itself. The study was conducted from a teachers perspective and the questions that the stydy will answer are: How do two teachers in fifth grade believe they should teach in order to develop reading comprehension among their own students, and what methods, activities and materials are the teachers using in order to develop students' reading omprehension in the educational practise. The methods used during the study were interviews and observations. The observations were made in order to complete the picture from the interviews.

Detta är en kvalitativ studie om över- och underordning i heterosexuella pars vardag. Carin Holmbergs (1993) avhandling "Det kallas kärlek" är min största hjälp och det är från den jag hämtat större delen av de teorier jag använt. Holmbergs (1993) teorier om könsmakt är min utgångspunkt. Det var hennes avhandling som lade grunden och väckte mitt intresse för att göra en liknande studie. Jag gjorde fyra gruppintervjuer med en mindre observation.

The essay discusses the effects that changes to the office plan have on organizational culture. Information about actual change as well as expected change in organizational culture was gathered before the empirical research was initiated. The empirical research was carried out at the Customer Logistics department at Ericsson through: an interview with a manager in charge of the relocation and design of the office, a manager for the specified department and also five employees of this department. The empirical studies show that there was a significant change in organizational culture and that results were not always as expected. There was a loss in symbolic actions, which needed to be compensated for, a perceived reduction in spontaneous communication, and a mixed response of perceived change in social interaction.

This essay is built upon the subject of drama. Its purpose was to examine if drama was a good and important educational method to/for children, and if drama is enhancing childrens self-esteem and self-confidence. By reviewing the results from literature and interviews, my intention was to compare the results, in order to find out what the views of the literature and respondents on drama was.I used qualitative interviewing, to find out what the teachers had to say about drama, and I used literature that was relevant to the purpose of the essay. I took a deeper look at the meaning of educational drama and pedagogical drama was, and also the meaning of self-esteem and self-confidence, in order to connect it with the results from the literature and the interviews.  After studying the literature and the interviews, I could see coherence, and therefore compile a result.  Both literature and the interviewed teachers considers drama to be a good and important method within the educational school and that drama positively has got a strengthening effect on childrens self-esteem and self-confidence.

The purpose of this study is to examine how consultants define conceptions of diversity and discrimination. There has also been an aim to find connections to the term intersectionality within the consultants? definitions. The link between consultants and academic research is interesting to examine in order to examine what they base their definitions of different conceptions on. In order to explore these definitions and discussions I have used the qualitative method of interviewing each consultant separately at different occasions.

The study deals with the beliefs that relatives of alcohol and drug dependent persons, and representatives from social services have to the various forms of support available for the relatives. Those who participate in the study points out that there are many people who have a need for support as a relative of an alcohol or drug addicted individual, but that there are circumstances that make them choose not to seek assistance. The study shows that the relatives can experience a reluctance to seek support from social services because of how the organization looks like. The study is qualitative, where the collection of the empiric material has consisted in six semi-structured interviews. Three of them have been with relatives of alcohol-or drug-dependent persons and three have been with social workers in various professions, whose work consists of helping both the relatives of people with alcohol and drug dependence as well as people who are dependent.