Sweden became a member of the European Union in 1995. Consequently Sweden became obligated to implement the Working Time Directive 2003/88/EC (formerly termed 93/104/EC). At that time Sweden considered that their legislation already gave their employees as high level of protection as the directive prescribed. Instead they decided upon an adjustment of the collective agreements concerning working time. A particular EC-restriction was incorporated in the Working Hours Act (SFS 1982:673).

Because of an increasing demand from customers and changing external environment, there is a need for continuous improvements, for both manufacturing and service organizations, to meet these demands. Manufacturing organizations have been working systematically with quality improvements for a long time, but it has not been as common for service organizations. Because of that the methods to use for implementation of the systematic improvements have not been designed to fit service organizations, and not either for public organizations. The purpose of this thesis is to explain if and why the Swedish Road Administration?s organizational culture and handling of ideas and deviation support an implementation of continuous improvement management.

KSL Trading Inc is a trading company in the Jönkoping area that distributesmaterial for the furniture and interior design industry.The purpose of this report is to analyze the existing material flow andwarehouse layout as well as to identify the issues there are today at KSL?swarehouse for board material. When we identified what kind of problems thatexisted we were able to design a new plan for the material flow and storagepossibilities. The problems we found where:? There is no well-organised warehouse layout? There are no routines to keep the warehouse clean and in order? There is no formed plan how to handle materialTo solve these problems we have used different methods like interviews,observations, calculations and literature studies.

This study forms part of the R&D project "Improved survival of bird chicks in organic fields" managed by the Rural Economy & Agricultural society in Uppsala. The skylark (Alauda arvensis) is a species that has decreased drastically in Sweden as a consequence of more intensive cropping. Studies in England have shown that skylark reproduction can be greatly improved within conventional fields, at a low cost, by establishing patches of bare ground (skylark plots). Within conventional farming, herbicides can be used in case a weed problem arises due to implementation of these skylark plots, whereas this is not allowed in organic farming. This study examined the effects of skylark plots on the weed culture in organic autumn-sown (winter) cereals and whether weeds might cause long-term problems to farmers. The study was conducted in two parts; a field study and a review of the literature regarding the weeds observed. The field study was carried out in 2007 during three weeks in June and three weeks in July, on eleven organic fields with winter cereal in the vicinity of Uppsala.

The work as a personal assistant is sometimes associated with certain problems. Studies have shown that personal assistants often experience indistinct rules and roles concerning what should or should not be included in their duties. This study was undertaken to evaluate problems associated with the profession as a personal assistant, how widespread they are and how they are dealt with. Specifically, the study evaluates if the personal assistants have to do duties that they consider they are not assigned to do. Different roles (formal as informal) are also discussed which may be of current interest in this study, but also how we see people on basis of ethics and moral.

Umeå University currently uses two Course Management System, Moodle and Sakai (Cambro). Both Moodle and Sakai are based on open source code and are today the two more popular choices among Swedish Universities. They both have different strengths and weaknesses both from a technical perspective and a user perspective. This can create problems for a course responsible/teacher when it comes to planning the course structure at a distance course but also when planning the course structure on a campus course that uses a Course Management System. With this as my starting point my formulations of questions become:How do the Course Management Systems that Umeå University uses differs, both from a technical perspective and user perspective?What possibilities is there in the Course Management Systems to use a different Course Structure?Is there a noticeable difference on the view of Course Management System of teachers and students at different departments?The purpose with my essay is to create a basis that course responsible/teacher can use to plan the course structure.

This report is about the issue with decreasing production rate mainly caused by failuresrelated to the multiswitch. The multiswitch is a machine at Gefleortens Mejeriföreningwhich has the function of distributing milk cartons from one incoming track into fiveoutgoing tracks. Milk cartons who gets stuck and there by causes the production to stop,is the mainly problem with this constructionThe purpose with this report is to understand the causing factors and make suggestions which can help solving these factors. By analyzing the machine during production, having contact with different suppliers, searching internet for information, 3d-cad drawings and the complementary with personal experiences, this machine has  been evaluated and as a result of this new problem has come to be known.The discovered problems was analyzed and resulted in new suggestions for alternative options. Later the most functional results was chosen and put as a suggestion for the new model.A new machine built with the suggestions from this report assures to be well adapted to the environment at Gefleortens Mejeriföreing and the problems it causes..

Several industrial scandals, especially those about Enron and WorldCom, have lead to an intense debate about the independent audit and the independent auditor. A substantial part of the auditor?s income originates from counselling, and therefore the role of the auditor may be seen as double, and the auditor?s objectivity may be questioned. In the year of 2002, a new Auditors Act was legislated in Sweden. In the 21 § of the act, a model based on principles was introduced, to test the auditor independence in every single case.

ECG-Screening for young elite athletesAbstractBackgroundSudden cardiac death (SCD) during physical activity is a frightening and emotional tragedy that draws huge media attentions when it occurs. Fortunately it is a relatively uncommon occurrence but happens nonetheless to young athletes who often seems to be in perfect health. SCD is used as a term for sudden unexpected complications on the cardiovascular system that leads to a deadly outcome normally within the first hour of onset of symptoms and the cause is some sort of underlying cardiovascular disease that gets triggered by physical activity.Normally athletes gets divided into two groups dependent on age, over and under 35 years, and this studies focus is on the younger group since it is often during this period athletes are at the elite level. It is also in this category the most unexpected sudden deaths occur that is not due to coronary atherosclerosis, which is the dominant cause of death, and drastically increases, for people over 35 years old.AimThe aim of this study was to scientific and unbiased analyze peer-reviewed clinical articles todescribe the pros, cons and cost to implement an ECG-screening as a standard before physicalactivities for specifically defined elite athletes.MethodA systematic review was performed and after all data collection 21 articles was chosen to beused as a base for both background and analyze. At the end 10 articles was fulfilling the criteria to be used at the analyze and later the results.ResultsThe implementation of ECG-screening has reduced SCD in Italy by 89 % between the years 1979-2004.

Reverse logistics is getting more and more attention both from companies and the public. It is an area with the possibility for companies to do good in the eyes of the public. This work focus on the return system of a one-way handling material called the loading ledge. The loading ledge is developed by IKEA as a substitute for the EUR-pallet in transports from suppliers with a long distance and even flow and in transports from suppliers with short distance and uneven flow. The loading ledge is made out of 100 % recyclable plastic.The purpose of this work is to find the most efficient set-up for recycling of loading ledges within IKEA on a European level from a transport and handling point of view considering aspects like cost, environment, time and, from an administrative point of view, user-friendliness.Who will the participants of the set-up be, where will they be located, which transports are needed and which income and costs does the set-up generate, are questions that will be answered.

Values, where an organization describes the attitude its members should have towards their work, are being used to a larger extent than before. The neoinstitutional theory describes organizations? attempts to create legitimacy through activities that are not really connected to their core activities. On the basis of the aforementioned theory this study examines to what extent employees and store managers at Clas Ohlson use and relate to the values of the organization in their everyday work. The study covers these individuals awareness of the impact of values in their work as well as the way they relate to values.

This thesis deals with the problems you face as a new game developer for the mobile platform Android when developing a 3D game and presents solutions to these problems. It also explores which optimizations should be made to increase performance and how well suited for game development the Android platform is. A simple 3D game for version 2.2 of Android was developed to examine this. The conclusion was that a good game structure for Android separates logic and rendering by running these separately in different threads. Solutions to rendering and updating of game logic were presented and optimizations were implemented for performance, although fewer optimizations were needed than was anticipated.

States have sovereignty in deciding how to tax business profits. If two states wish to tax the same profit that belongs to the same taxpayer, double taxation will arise. The increasing number of multinational companies gives rise to double taxation problems and the states have to co-operate to find out how to avoid such problems. The OECD Model Tax Convention includes an article in how to determine the rights to tax business profits. This article has been a subject of discussion and a committee of the OECD has been working to develop a new article 7.The work in proposing this new article has had as its aim to reassure that the interpretations of this regulation is made in the same way.

The Swedish government has made the decision to transform the talking book system from an analogue system to a digital system called DAISY by the end of 2004. The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how public libraries are affected by this system change. This is carried out by studying the current situation in public libraries concerning the transition to DAISY. This qualitative oriented study is primarily based on interviews with four librarians and three library managers at six public libraries. Management by objectives is here seen as a suitably theoretical framework since public municipal libraries are partly regulated by the governments goals and laws.

Sammandrag Information flödar genom samtidens organisationer och behöver systematiskt kontrolleras. Genom att implementera Enterprise Resource Planning Systems, även kallat ERP-system, kan företag enklare samla upp, strukturera och utnyttja all denna flödande information i ett och samma informationssystem. Majoriteten av alla företag misslyckas dock att fullständigt integrera ERP-systemet med sina vardagliga rutiner. Tidigare forskning tyder på att den utbildning slutanvändarna får och ett kontinuerligt ifrågasättande av organisationens värderingar, även kallat double-loop learning (DLL), påverkar organisationens möjlighet till en fullständig integration. Genom en kvalitativ flerfallsstudie på olika företag inom detaljhandeln, alla användare av samma ERP-system, har denna studie undersökt vilken roll utbildningsfasen spelar för att DLL ska uppstå vid en ERP-implementation.