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.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze marketing in the sector of banking. The following purpose is also to make an attempt to predict how marketing of banks will be structured in the future. Banks have a central role in today?s society which is constantly changing and that is why we are curious in how banks use different marketing channels today and how and if it will change in the future. The essay is based on a qualitative method.

A qualitative study is presented concerning children?s participation in the local decisionmaking in Swedish municipalities. The study also aims at finding out what are considered to be successful factors and obstacles connected to the implementation of children?s participation in local decision-making. The study contains a summary of the convention on the rights of the child, focusing on article 12, as well as previous research findings concerning children?s participation and factors enabling respectively hindering participation.

The purpose of this research is to identify how E-NGO and forest stakeholders, in the study referred to as non-state actors, have influenced the EU timber regulation; through participation and lobbyism towards the decision- makers (policy makers) at EU and national level, to achieve adjustments in the legislative text. The study also examines the relationships between the forest stakeholders, the E-NGOs and the EU-institutions, regarding communication, cooperation, informal and formal consultation where interviews were accomplished with decision-makers from the EU-institutions, forest stakeholders, E-NGOS and representatives from Swedish authorities that participated under the development of the EUTR during the period of 2008-2013. The participation and lobbying from non-state actors have most likely affected the outcome of the regulation, through alterations in the legislative text and through influencing the EU-institutions. Several factors that have affected the efficiency and timing of the influence have been identified through interviews as well as various approaches to influence the decision makers. The findings of the study may be useful for forest related interest groups that are involved in decision-making procedures at EU-level and as substance and material for further research in the subject of forest policy making at supranational level..

During the Swedish banking crisis in the early 1990?s, the government paid out 65 billion Swedish kronor to save Swedish banks from bankruptcy. In the process, two banks left the private sector to be taken over by the state. This thesis builds on a study from 1998 in seeking to quantify the financial end result for the Swedish government from the subsidies. Taking a cash flow approach and accounting for the time difference, it starts with the money paid out during the years of crisis and subtracts the money that has since been returned to the government by successful management of the relinquished assets.

The aim of this Master?s Thesis is to examine the importance of literacy and reading in a country like Jamaica. What role do public libraries and bookmobiles play in promoting literacy, and how does this work correspond with the UNESCO public library manifesto?To answer this, interviews were conducted with nine Jamaican librarians, and study visits were made to libraries and bookmobiles. In addition, development plans, policy and other relevant documents were analyzed.

This thesis investigates how the level of implementation of New Public Management affects an organization?s efficiency. According to theory, a high level of implementation leads to a more efficient organization. This thesis is based on two case studies conducted on two units within Stockholms Stad. One of the units shows a high level of implementation of NPM and a high level of efficiency.

The purpose with this final paper was to examine how the collaboration between parents and teachers can manifest itself. With collaboration, we mean the dialogue that has to exist between parents and teachers in regards to e.g. how well informed the parents are about the regulated principles on which the education plan is built on, and in which way they can take part in and influence the system. This is to empathize on the fact that a good collaboration between parents and teachers help create a good foundation for the pupil?s ability to learn.The method that we have used are questionnaires given to parents and teachers along with studies of literature both as means of furthering our studies as well as a basis for the design of the questionnaires.

This examination studies the gender balance of contemporary art exhibitions in Sweden. To what extent genders are equally represented assumes to be based on how the curating process considers equality work. Three categories of art organisations are studied with the intention to determine differences in equality approach between the categories. Official documents of each organisation are examined to understand how they formally relate to equality work. Statistics of the actual gender balance of each organisation are produced based on the last two years exhibition archives.

This paper was written at the Baltic Business School in Kalmar. The purpose was to analyze and determine the importance of packaged holidays within the tourism and travel sector and how value can be created for the customer. This have been done with a focus on the chosen parts; customer needs and how packaging can create value, how companies can work to give the customer increased value through packaging, last but not least how companies segment the market and if there are specific segments that prefer packaging. We have applied the qualitative method through conducting four face-to-face interviews and one phoneinterview. The purpose of this paper is not to generalize, but to show patterns in the chosen subject.

The thesis aims at, from a user perspective, examining how a group of industrial researchers understand the information seeking in their every day work. A qualitative method is employed. The empirical material consists of open-ended interviews with in all ten researchers. All of them work at the Swiss-Swedish Technology Company ABB's research laboratory in Västerås. The thesis is based on the opinion that the scientific knowledge production has become commercialised and that the scientific communication is going through certain changes.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate international students? views regarding information seeking and use of information sources. A further aim is also to investigate the possible factors influencing information seeking in relation to everyday life for international students. Interviews were carried out with eight international students, 20-35 years old from three continents. They were to stay in Sweden for at least five months for the purpose of studying.

Previous research has established coaches' important role in developing elite athletes (Durand, Bush, Thomson & Salmela 1996). Athlete enhancement and assisting athletes achieve ?peak performance? has been a major objective for elite coaches as well as sports scientists (Williams & Kendall, 2007) Despite this common goal, research also question whether sports scientists and the research they pursue really effects coaches knowledge and constitute a foundation for today and tomorrows athletic performances (Bishop 2008).  This study examined elite coaches? needs and use of sport science research as well as the interaction between elite coaches and sport scientists. Following interviews of ten elite coaches, content analysis revealed that sport science is both a formal and informal resource of knowledge for coaches. Development of athletes is seen as the main objective of research retrieval and personal and/or direct contact with the sport scientist is considered to be the best way to assemble.

Women and men's equal, or unequal treatment has long been a topic of conversation and the workplace is a place where the topic has been and continues to be in question. This study examines the jargon and culture within student-run companies in Gothenburg from a gender equality perspective, focusing on female and male perceptions. The study poses the research question: What does the culture and jargon look like in student-run companies in Gothenburg from a gender equality perspective? The choice of method for the study has been qualitative semi-structured interviews, which has been performed on current and former employees from several student-run companies in Gothenburg. The results show, on average, that the jargon and culture are perceived as relatively equal, but that there can be considerable variation across different areas.

This report describes a final thesis done during the spring of 2008 as part of the bachelor degree in computer engineering degree at the School of Engineering in Jönköping.The client is working in the consulting business and is involved in, amongst others, work regarding information security. Within this field they perform so called Threat, Risk and Vulnerability assessments. Today these assessments are done by a predefined method, but many details are controlled by the person documenting the project. A wish was made that the implementation was standardized, it should also ease the task of estimating the need for time and money. The solution for this seems to be a software tool.