Many companies are currently working to optimize and streamline their processes and production lines to achieve higher profitability. In increasingly competitive markets, companies are working to find solutions to increase the value of their production with such a small use of resources as possible. A tool used to accomplish this is the Lean management system. Lean comes from the production system that Toyota has been developing since the early 1900's, The Toyota Production System (TPS). The Lean philosophy helps companies, by working towards continuous improvement in its operations, to achieve higher customer satisfaction, more efficient production and ultimately higher profitability. Many companies are working to implement Lean in their organization. But there are many who fail to implement a complete change towards Lean.

The purpose of the essay has been to clarify why and how small companies, whose major resource is knowledge, establish strategic alliances and which opportunities it brings. We have increased our understanding for the concept of strategic alliances through empirical search and through well-known scientist work. The method, which has been used in the essay, is principally qualitative interviews and gathering secondary data from articles from well-known authors. Our study has given that we have found that entering strategic alliances can make growth and by that way create competitive advantages for the company in question. We also found that there are risks with strategic alliances and the company can protect themselves by legal actions.

Risk management is a key competency that is constantly being researched how it can be improved within project management. The risk management process consists of four major steps: identify risks, assess the risks? significance on the project, evaluate and address the key risks and follow up.The majority of companies seem to neglect certain identified risks, and decide not to mitigate if the risk does not cause adverse effects to the business. To counteract undesirable consequences and help organisations to become more effective at managing risks an initial work has been conducted for a risk repository.The project develops a proposal on the design of a risk repository which aim to effectively support a database implementation. The study includes literature studies which resulted in a relational model for database implementation.

The aim of this study was to examine the knowledge and the experience that school counsellors have about tics and Tourette syndrome. This study is based on a qualitative research which we conducted with semi-structured interviews. We have done five interviews with different school counsellors in a small municipality in southern Sweden. The theoretical approach that was used in this study was theory of knowledge as a comprehensive theory and professional competence which includes formal knowledge and tacit knowledge. Some of the study?s conclusions are that the School Counsellors had different professional competence about tics and Tourette syndrome.

It can be difficult for young people to find their first job; a solution to this problem may bethrough temporary work at a staffing agency to gain their first experience. As temporary workers,individuals are often forced to frequently change their jobs, which require that the company'sprocesses for introduction are able to transfer the needed knowledge and the temporal employee´s capacity to quickly learn a new role. Knowledge management and knowledge transfer areimportant aspects to most organizations, but how are these aspects used when introducing temporarystaffing personnel to new work? The purpose of the study is to identify the process oftemporary staffing to identify possible suggestions for improvement based on principles ofknowledge transfer. The research question "How can the transfer of knowledge be developed forthe introduction of new staffing personnel?" is divided into sub questions;? ?How is the processto hire temporary staff performed??, ?What problems can occur in the process of introduction ofnew temporal staff?? and ?How can ICT be used to support the introduction of temporal staff??.The theoretical framework is based around theories of the context in which the knowledge transferred,what type of knowledge is to be transferred, the channels that are possible to use to transferknowledge through, employees function as channels to transfer knowledge with a special emphasison the role of the mentor, and the transferee's own motivation and the capacity to receivethe knowledge that is being transferred.To understand the process of hiring temporal staff, a survey was performed using open-ended interviewswith consultants at employment agencies, and with the support of the frameworkDELTA Meta Architecture.

The main purpose of this Master Thesis has been to investigate issues concerning apple fruit quality in orchards of Äppelriket Österlen. The goal has been to develop a document, for future benefit towards growers and company management in the production of high quality apples.In order to investigate main issues of fruit quality, focus has been on statistics concerning apple varieties, age of the apple trees, new planting, orchard size and growers opinions. Nine growers have been interviewed to investigate opinions and contribution of different growing techniques to increased fruit quality. The investigation showed high age of the trees in production and low rate of planting of new trees. Differences in fruit quality were highest between small orchards. Most growers were satisfied with their fruit quality and with their own measures made to improve it.

Kommer snart ;).

Knowledge management syftar till hur ett företag hanterar kunskap i sin organisation och begreppet börjades användas på 1990-talet. Behovet av en väl utarbetad knowledge managementstrategi blir uppenbart då någon börjar eller slutar på ett företag. Det finns mycket resurser att spara om man på ett effektivt sätt kan ge den nyanlände kunskap och överföra kunskap till organisationen från den som ska lämna. Risk finns också att nödvändig kunskap går förlorad om någon slutar och tar med sig nödvändig information som då blir svår eller omöjlig att återfå.Syftet med detta arbete är att undersöka vilka kopplingar som finns mellan knowledge managementstrategier hos en organisation och personalomsättningsstrategierna. Frågeställningen att besvaras är vilka knowledge managementstrategier kan ett kunskapsintensivt företag ha för att bäst hantera en anställds avgång eller ankomst? Genom litteraturstudier lades en grundförståelse för ämnet som sedan utmynnade i ett intervjuunderlag som ställdes mot två företag.

Purpose:The purpose of this thesis is: to determine key success factors for an organisation?s internal process of internalising future trends forecasting. Methodology:A qualitative approach has been chosen by examining three different companies (Electrolux, H&M and, Sony Ericsson) through interviews and other data. The empirical material have been analysed by using valid theory as a platform from where the analysis can be performed. This has created a conceptual analysis that enables the use of the conclusions in other similar companies.

Företaget Gepac Plast AB designar bärkassar till olika kunder och vill ha en tilltalande webbsida som fram häver deras arbetsområde. Samt en designfunktion på webbsidan som gör det möjligt för kunderna att skicka in egna designförslag för bärkassar till företaget. Med ett CMS system (Content Management System) för att bygga webbsidor ska de nya funktionerna till den existerande webbsidan skapas, med hjälp av plugin och ett dataprogram. Även en uppdatering av webbsidan ska utföras. Slutresultat för projektet fick blandat resultat med en lyckad uppdatering, medan den önskade designfunktionen inte är i bruk än så länge..

The purpose of this essay is to identify costs for providing First-line and Second-line support, and then allocate these cost to different goods and services (cost objects) being supported. The thesis also intends to improve the overall cost awareness in IT settings..

It is statutory that teachers shall document their student's development of knowledge in different subjects. The teachers employed by Sundbybergs municipality have been commissioned to do the documentation in the web-based electronic system Projekt- och Omdömesdatabasen, P.O.D.B. The purpose of this study was to investigate witch effect the IT-solution P.O.D.B has brought for the teachers in their task of student documentation. By conducting interviews and questionnaire studies I have been looking for answers to if the target achievements have increased by using the IT-solution, and if the teachers are aware of what they may or may not write about their students in the system. The conclusions I have been able to draw through my studies are that the teachers have accepted the commission to use P.O.D.B.

An automatic control system for calibration of pressure indicators has been constructed. This control system can be used as a complement to the calibration system located at AerotechTelub, division MainPartner, in Linköping. The calibration system used today contains some not wanted pressure changes, which is compensated by hand today. The new system presented in this report automates the calibrating process and simplifies the calibration. Suitable hardware as motor, controls card and so on have been found and software in the form of Visual Basic program has been developed.

Since feeding fodder crops to dairy cows is a heavy and time-consuming but often disregarded line of work, this study wishes to view the different possibilities that are currently available to decrease the time to feed and apply this knowledge on an existing farm. For this purpose, four farms have been studied due to what feeding systems that are currently used and how long time the feeding required. The occurring systems are either mobile, i.e. a feed mixer operated by a tractor witch feeds the cattle via a drivable fodder table, or a stationery mixer, i.e. an electrically powered mixer which fills an automatic feeder.

During the last decade executive coaching has become an increasingly popular method of management development. Few studies have been conducted within this area, especially in Sweden, and little has been said about the construction of management in executive coaching. The purpose of this master?s thesis is to study executive coaching from a social constructionist perspective, focusing on the construction of management. The two research questions are: How is management constructed in executive coaching? How can we understand the construction of management in executive coaching? Additionally, we identify gender as a social construction of importance and thus include a gender perspective in our analysis.