People in today?s society are becoming more and more aware of how important it is to use energy as efficiently as possible. This is clearly noticeable by an increase in home produced heat with e.g. solar panels or heat pumps heating systems. These changing customer demands forces district heating technology to be redesigned, which is why there is an ongoing research regarding the next generation of district heating - low temperature district heating (LTDH).

The purpose of the house which is the basis of this report is to be able present itself on the market as a relatively cheap and at the same time a climate friendly choice. The house is supposed to be able to be built anywhere in Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia in a short period of time. This puts demand on what kind of heating system the house can have, since not all places have the geographic advantage of being able to use geothermal or district heating. Therefore the heating system choices will only include those that are not limited by their geographic location. The house will be built in modules which only require the groundwork to be done before the house can be erected. In this report "System solutions for plus or passive-housing" a comprehensive literature search has been conducted as well as a number of calculations.

This thesis work has been performed at the Division of Assembly Technology at Linköping University for a period of ten weeks. The work is part of the project ProFlexA, which is a research project in collaboration between Linköping University, Lund University, and industrial partners such as Combi Wear Parts and Smålands Stålgjuteri AB.The casting process creates random incurred burrs and defects, which must be removed during a cleaning process to make sure that the cast can be sold. Automation has long been sought for the cleaning of castings due to, among other things, poor working conditions for staff, but this has proved difficult to implement with today's technology. Automation has for some time been available for more capital strong companies with large annual volumes, but for smaller companies with small-and medium-sized volumes, automation has not been an option.The goal of ProFlexA is to develop an automated cleaning cell aimed at small-and medium-sized volumes.The goal of the thesis is to do a pre study at ProFlexA?s partners on cleaning of castings, and develop concepts for automated cleaning of castings.By recording the process and cycle times, the cleaning of castings has been documented as it works today, and on this basis, information and statistics has been compiled.

Sandvik Group is a global engineering corporation within materials technology and produces, among other things, band sawsteel. In order to develop custom relations, custom benefits and the supply chain Sandvik wants to become more acquainted with its customers. Improved feedback means that Sandvik will be able to develop its products in a customized direction. This thesis is a tool for educating and developing sales staff. As a support a calculation tool that can be used as a sales aid has been developed.

Background: According to many authorities Trademark consideration will within the companies become all more prioritized objectives for competitive advantage and a strong organisational structure.Trade marking is becoming an important tool, not only Production oriented companies apply this on their products or services whereas it is today spread in many different sectors.Problems: On the basis of theoretical and empirical studies, we will try to see how a trademark is built up.This will guide us to our questions at issue:? How has the actual process for HTF been in order to strengthen and to build up their trademark, how have they achieved this in practice?? What are the underlying criteria?s to for this work and what role has the consultant company BMN in the actual process?Aim: The authors have for intention to create an understanding on why there is interesting for a trade union organisation like HTF to carry out a trademark development investment. A further understanding will be to highlighting a strong trademark's advantages and possible disadvantages.Results: As a trade union organisation where the relationship to the members and the potential members is becoming all more important is the interesting to highlight their trademark clear and in addition to that contribute to building and establishing strong relationships. on the basis of this study we can state that it is now one of the most important support activities that as a trade unions to highlight its core values through trademark. As a trade union, one can to a large extent work with and to apply the market the economic mocks-up for trademark build up.The most important aspect is that we can state , in the future developed to concentrate more on communication, positioning, segmentation and diversification, which the trademark act as intermediary.

Cattle used for meat production can be held outside all year round and due to the legislation they should have access to shelters or other buildings for protection against the elements giving them a dry and clean bedding. There are different opinions concerning their need of protection and the question about necessity of shelters for cattle is of current interest due to a less profitable economy in meat production and the investment costs for shelters. The aim of this study was to acquire more knowledge about the natural behaviour of cattle concerning their use of shelters. The basis of the study was a series of questions regarding when animals choose to stay in shelters, if shelters were used less when they had access to protecting vegetation, how temperature and weather conditions affected the use of shelters and the influence of distance between shelter and feed. Behavioural studies was conducted at five different farms where six groups of suckler cows and heifers of following breeds and crossbreeds were observed; Aberdeen Angus, Charolais, Hereford, Scottish Highland Cattle, Simmental and the Swedish breeds SKB and SRB.

Globalization has stimulated the free markets and has made possible for Swedish companiesto expand internationally. Some markets have been deemed attractive and companies havechosen to enter them. The decisions concerning internationalization and marketing havedetermined the success of the companies on the new market. Therefore, several elementsbecome important: the motives behind the new market entry, the local marketcharacteristics and the adaptation of the four components of the marketing mix ? product,price, place and promotion.The purpose of this thesis is to study how three Swedish companies adapt their marketingmix to the local conditions in Australia and identifies success factors in order to help othercompanies considering a market entry.

The management of water resources and waste water varies between the countries of the EU. For many years, a large part of the water in Europe has been contaminated by, among other things, insufficiently treated waste water and emissions from agriculture. The EU Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC and the Urban Waste Water Directive 91/271/EEC are intended to harmonize fresh-water management and waste water management within the whole EU, aiming at safeguarding drinking water of good quality and a high quality of all water within the EU today and in the future. There are however some problems concerning the waste-water directive. One problem is the huge investment needed in Slovakia to fulfil the demands of the waste-water directive for waste-water management in larger communities (with more than 2000 inhabitants).

Servera R&S AB is Sweden?s largest wholesale company within the restaurant and food service industry. Servera R&S AB is the daughter company to Axel Johnson AB, which in turn is a part of the Axel Johnson Group with Antonia Ax:son Johnson as the owner. Servera is a nation wide company with a business concept of offering a complete selection of merchandise and services to the professional food service market. The company is split into for different regions: the north region, the middle region, the southwest region, and the southeast region and has its headquarter in Stockholm.

An increased demand for processed goods on the property market has contributed toinvestments within the Swedish sawmill industry. The purpose with this study is to make amarket investigation of pre cut lengths within a defined geographic area. The constituent forthis investigation is HAL (AB Hilmer Andersson) who invests in a new plane facility and twofinger jointing machines in affiliation to their sawmill in Lässerud, the vest part of Värmland.To investigate the demand of pre cut lengths and identifies the value creating factors and costfactors which the customer within the segments industry and property market perceive, havedifferent customer value theories been used. Theories of customer value and the theory aboutoffering has been the source of creating the qualitative interview with a selection of currentand new potential customers for HAL.The result of the study first gives an introduction of HAL?s new offering and a description ofHAL?s current customers, which gives the reader an understanding of why searching for newcustomers is made in the defined area.

I Sverige är investeringar i fonder en vanlig förekommande sparform. En typ av fonder är SRI-fonder (Socially Responsible Investment-fonder), som strävar efter att göra hållbara placeringar förutom att prestera goda finansiella resultat. Denna rapport ämnar besvara frågan gällande hur bra SRI-fonder i Sverige presterar rent ekonomiskt i jämförelse med konventionella fonder, samt vilka variabler fondernas prestation kan bero av. Att material inom området samlas in och behandlas är viktigt då SRI-fonders framtid skulle kunna leda till stora förändringar i både privatpersoners och företags förhållningsätt till hållbarhet. För att analysera prestationen hos SRI-fonder och konventionella fonder data samlats in för 71 SRI-fonder och 71 konventionella fonder på den svenska fondmarknaden för året 2012.

The Baltic Sea is threatened by eutrophication that largely is due to nutrient leaching from farmland within the catchment area. To solve this problem the surrounding countries cooperate within various configurations such as HELCOM and the EU-financed project Baltic Compass. Poor manure management in Russia has been discussed frequently the last couple of years. A literature review of different types of reports and legal acts is the core of this degree project which has been performed in connection to two ongoing research projects financed by EU (Baltic Compass) and SIDA. It is supplemented with interviews with Swedish agricultural consultants and travel reports from two occasions when I had the opportunity to discuss with Russians active within the agricultural sector. Different hypotheses were investigated and discussed. The environmental debate in Russia is quiet and there is a widespread approach that economic profit always trumps environmental concern ? a Soviet heritage that influence the Russian agriculture considerably. The Russian legal acts on stable manure management focus mainly on sanitary questions and only secondary on nutrient leaching.

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.

Fondmarknaden har vuxit stadigt under ett flertal år vilket har resulterat i att en allt större del av befolkningen placerar sitt sparande i fonder. Samtidigt som fondermarknaden har vuxit har även intresset för etiska och samhällsmässiga aspekter blivit allt mer utbrett. Detta har resulterat i nya sparandeformer där fondmarknaden har anammat investerares värderingar och skapat socialt ansvarsfulla investeringar (Socially Responsible Investment, SRI) fonder som inkluderar dessa i sina investeringsstrategier.Tidigare forskning angående den aktiva förvaltningen av fonder har försökt utröna vilka faktorer som påverkar förvaltarnas val av tillgångar. En av de starkast påverkande faktorer är flockbeteende där förvaltare tar investeringsbeslutet utifrån andra förvaltare istället för privat information. Detta har särskild betydelse för SRI-fonder då dess investerare inte enbart väljer fonder utifrån avkastning utan även till följd av individens värderingar.

Författare: Elin Sjöberg och Linda WibergHandledare: Anders IsakssonDatum: 2008-05-20Ämne: KandidatuppsatsE-post:  elin_sj@hotmail.comlindowiberg@hotmail.comSedan en tid tillbaka har fokus på företags ansvar gentemot miljö och samhälle ökat, detta har bland annat resulterat i att allt fler företag väljer att publicera hållbarhetsredovisningar. Hållbarhetsredovisningarna visar den ekonomiska utvecklingen som är bunden till sociala, etiska och miljörelaterade förhållanden. Samtidigt har saker börjat hända på finansmarknaden då både institutionella investerare och vanliga kunder ställer krav på att fondbolagen ska erbjuda produkter som har en etisk inriktning, så kallade social responsible investment, SRI. Informationen för att göra SRI-anpassade beslut och för att bedöma om ett företag får ingå i en etisk anpassad fond hämtas från flera källor, där hållbarhetsredovisningar är en av dem. Forskning visar på att det som redovisas i hållbarhetsredovisningar inte alltid är den information som en analytiker behöver för att på ett effektivt sätt kunna göra sin värdering av företaget.