For a company to get the best possible profitability, requires financial planning. Budgeting isa common tool in financial planning. For operating lamb producers, a planning program suchas Agriwise is a good tool. Individual lamb producers may change certain standard figureswithin the planning program to better correspond with reality of the individual cases. In thisway, lamb producers may plan according to which revenues and costs they may expect thenext period.

This examination work aims to describe how a supply chain around the biggest pellets factory in Sweden will be configured in a logistic perspective. The plant and associated infrastructure are in the building phase and will have production start on the 2 November 2009. The key question that is set in this examination work is to recognize the logistic processes which are essential for an effective flow of materials and information that link the source of supply with the ultimate customer. In order to get the answer, a flowcharting of these supply chain processes is required for understanding the pipeline activities such as input and storage of raw material, the production system and the output of pellets to the customers. The basis for this supply chain map is a model-based representation of these logistic processes and activities that are involved around the pellets factory.

With a larger awareness of the climate changes and increasing electricity prices, energy efficiency measures in the industry have become more common. By rationalize the activity and by the same time decrease the emission of greenhouse gases the company can both save money and reduce negative environmental impact. For the Swedish industries the electricity price have traditional been relative low, which has resulted in a considerable larger usage than other European countries. By a deregulation of the European electricity market the electricity price will level off between the countries, which will cause a higher electricity price in Sweden than we are use to. To prevent that the Swedish industry don?t lose competitiveness against the other European countries, it will require energy efficiency activities in all different forms.ABB Sweden has decided to decrease their total energy usage with five percent in two years.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and propose Improvements to the current procedure for cost estimations of purchased maintenance work at Banverket, the Swedish rail administration. This governmental institution is responsible for the procurement of maintenance services for the country?s railroad network through open tenders. Due to the generally low number of contractors, it is particularly necessary to establish accurate cost estimates in order to assess the offers and ensure that a fair price is being paid to the suppliers. Several flaws associated with the current practice are identified and analyzed according to cost accounting theories.

Lean Production is used by many manufacturing companies. Companies in process industries do not use Lean Production to the same extent today. This is part of the report's issue to explore how Lean Production can be applied to a company in the process industries.The investigated company is a processing company that manufactures various types of foil. The company wishes to streamline its production and has therefore asked the authors to examine if Lean Production can offer the company Improvements in their production. Lean Production value stream mapping tool has been selected to identify and analyze the current state of two of its products in production.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how Swedish retail companies work with CSR internationally.The study also sought to explore the opportunities and challenges that exist, and the stakeholders that motivate companies CSR commitment.The theoretical framework is composed of international CSR guidelines of the OECD and the UN, Carroll's CSR pyramid and three-stage model and Freeman's stakeholder theory. Furthermore a qualitative research approach was applied where four in-depth interviews were conducted with representatives from Axfood, Löfbergs Lila, Oriflame and CSR Sweden.Finally, the study demonstrated the conclusion that the companies CSR strategies are structured in a similar way regardless of the market. CSR attract and retain workers, create a good reputation for brands and results in working conditions, living standards and environmental Improvements. Difficulties, however, are the complexity of being able to control each partner and manage differences in language, laws and culture between countries. Finally there are a number of stakeholders that motivate companies to work with CSR, of which shareholders are considered the most important..

The academic underachievement of looked after children is well known. By involving foster carers in a Paired Reading intervention a Swedish project tried to address this issue, replicating a successful British trial. The aim of my thesis was to study the variations in the foster carers? experiences of this literacy intervention. Reading reports from 100 children were collected and qualitative interviews with 15 foster parents were analyzed using concepts from motivational psychology.

Objective: To investigate the experiences of ambulance nurses when using Boussignac CPAPcompared to their previous model, and their suggestions for possible Improvements in the use of CPAP in the care of patients with pulmonary oedema. Method: A qualitative study with a descriptive and exploratory approach. Data was collected through ten semi-structured interviews with ambulance nurses, seven men and three women. The analysis was conducted using Lundman and Graneheim?s content analysis.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse and evaluate human relations within organisations in purpose to achieve higher productivity. Both research objects gained interest in this essay due to how their own result should be effected and their own values but the writers also detected a little curiosity on how the competition handled these questions. The essay have progressed in the following steps: first the authors have tried to find a problem definition and a scientific ground to work from. After that an extensive literature study were done to be followed by an mapping of apparition on the human relations on Scania motorverkstads logistics department and Volvo Logistics by interviews of the people in charge in these organisations. To see whether there was a unanimous line of thoughts between the management and the employees the authors made questionnaires to the different department.

Sweden experienced a decline in exports of 16 percent in the period after the financial crisis. The decline has created a lot of question marks regarding the traditional exports which has started a process with the aim of finding Sweden?s next cash cow in export.Sweden adopted stringent environmental laws early which positioned them as a strong nation in environmental awareness. The stringent environmental legislation meant that the Swedish companies were required to minimize the environmental impact, which created a demand for eco-efficient products. Despite the early demand for eco-efficient products, the international success of the Swedish cleantech companies has been modest.The government can increase firms international competitiveness by encouraging, supporting and promoting activities on the domestic market.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the perception of value and risk in CSR as well as analyzing how financial institutions influence responsible behavior in business in order to create sustainable economic growth.Methodology: The study has a qualitative research method used by an abductive process. Data has been collected through semi-structured interviews with respondents from three venture capital companies and three banks. The sample of respondents was done through a convenience sample with respect to access and expertise in the research area.Conclusion: The most important meanings of the research results have shown that CSR holds an intrinsic value concerning contributing value as its conceptual meaning in terms of sustainable development. CSR can also be regarded as a dimension of risk management to reduce the risk of negative externalities on corporate activities. Investors and financiers contribute to sustainable companies through active ownership and Improvements in the CSR dimensions.

During the last few years, there has been a lot of debate regarding the price ofelectricity on the Swedish market. According to a recent survey from Sifo, anon-bias governmental institute for consumer research and testing, the priceof electricity is what worries Swedish households the most. An investigationof the eciency of the Nordic power grids inuence on the Swedish spotprice is therefore both relevant and valuable. Three quarters of all electricityproduced in the Nordic region is traded at the Nord Pool Spot power market.This survey examines how much of the variation of the swedish spot pricecan be descried by the variation of the nordic system price and how much iscaused because of ineciencies in the power grid. Primarily, linear regressionwith adjustments for endogeneity and heteroskedasticity has been used in orderto analyze data obtained mainly from Nord Pool Spot and Vattenfall AB.The results show that the variation of the system price can account for all butabout 40% of the variation in the Swedish spot price.

Benchmarking is an established method of working which is often used in order to develop the quality of the organization. However, almost 70% of the organizations with benchmarking fail due to the lack of planning and structuring of the benchmarking exercise. Maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry are one of those who have decided to conduct benchmarking. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to gain knowledge of how the maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry deliberately structure and plan to use benchmarking as a driving force for quality development in the maintenance sections.The study is a hermeneutic case study. Telephone interviews and document analysis have been used as data acquisition methods.The results show that there is a lack of both planning and structuring in the benchmarking process, and lack of management commitment for quality Improvements within industrial maintenance.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of bilateral repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on language ability in eight participants with aphasia. All participants underwent two periods of treatment and five periods of evaluation. During one treatment period high frequency stimulation was given to the left hemisphere and low frequency stimulation to the right and in one other period placebo stimulation was given. Boston Naming Test and Token Test were used to assess the effects of treatment on naming ability and language comprehension. Results showed that no significant effects were found on group level.

Diagnosis means detection and isolation of faults. A model based diagnosis system is built on a mathematical model of the system. The difficulty when constructing the diagnosis system depends om how the model is formulated. In this report, a method is described that rewrites the model on such a form that the construction of the diagnosis algoritm is easy. The model is transformed by two state space transformations and the result will be a system on state space form where one part of the system becomes easy to supervise.