User friendly and usable are two words that are often mentioned in the context of marketing new products. By doing so it adds an extra sense of quality to the product. The meaning of these words is therefore something that every product wants. But what is it that makes a product usable and user friendly? What methodology exists formaking sure that a product is usable? Does it exist applicable processes to ensure user centered development? These questions together with a practical example are parts of what will be addressed in this report.The thesis was carried out for C2 Management, a company that works with supporting other companies in their work with quality and constant improvements.

This master thesis is developed based on the desire of the water and sewage department in the municipality of Karlskrona. The department, which vouches for the quality of produced drinking water and sewage cleaning, was in need of help dealing with risk analysis.The water and sewage department is obliged to identify and assess risks according to Swedish legislation. However, no guides for this purpose regarding safety, health, environment and quality were available. The aim of this report was to accomplish a guideline for the performance of risk analysis within water and sewage plants. If the guideline is used, the requirements in the legislation will be obtained.

A consultant is an external expert that exists within all types of organizations. The consulting service can be divided into individual practitioners and large companies whose sole task is to hire out consultants to clients. The need for consultants has grown due to the restructuring of Swedish businesses during the past decades. They have put parts of their business on contract. This has led to a market with other player that have been able to focus on these parts.

Forestry is an important industry in Sweden, with clear-cut as the most commonly used method for harvesting. Here the long-term impact of clear-cut on lake water quality (dissolved organic carbon (DOC), nitrogen, phosphorus and pH) has been investigated, based on 23 lakes sampled during autumn. Data for additional 15 lakes sampled for the Swedish monitoring program were also used. Lakes were classified as 5, 25, 40 and 60 year based on data of the forest age in the catchment, gathered from the Swedish national forest inventory. Clear-cut lakes were classified as 5 years (>20% of the catchment clear-cut during the last 10 years).

It has now passed two years since the new site- and construction law, PBL, went into force. It replaced the previous PBL applicable since 1987, and it involves relatively large changes in many different areas of the construction sector. The ambitions of the new law are for instance to simplify and clarify the legal text, increase efficiency in the permitting processes and improve the quality of construction. To achieve this, a variety of changes was made. Some of the most important are: inserted deadline in the processing of building applications, extended assessment of building applications, revised rules about controlplan and quality manager, a certificate is required to start and end the project, an additional meeting is inserted and the construction management of the municipalities will have to do a mandatory visit at the work scene.

Today, our cows experience a harder pressure to achieve higher milk yield. To manage this challenge the animal needs first class feeding and treatment. An important aspect of the feeding is to fulfil the need from the cows of especially fiber; and fiber with a sufficient proportion of long particles. Both too much and too little fiber is bad for the wellbeing of the cow, and she might get diseases like acidosis. Many models for feed management have been developed to secure that the animal gets enough of e.g. fiber with a sufficient proportion of long particles.

According to the Water Framework Directive of the European Union, macrophytes should be used as indicators in the ecological and environmental monitoring of lakes. In the member state Sweden the Environmental Protection Agency has elaborated assessment criteria for determining lake status based on macrophytes. The main focus of this thesis is to evaluate the efficiency of the assessment criteria for macrophytes. In addition the concordance between the ecological status classes of the four quality factors included was analysed.The assessment criteria for macrophytes are based on the total phosphorus preference of the respective species. The focus is thus mainly on the nutrient level of the investigated lakes and the environmental problem monitored is eutrophication.

Pine twisting rust (Melampsora pinitorqua) is a parasitic rust fungus found all across Sweden causing damage resulting in lower quality and reduced tree growth in pine stands. In Sweden, the fungus is dependent on two alternate hosts; European aspen (Populus tremula) and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). Pine twisting rust has five different spore stages, two of them (uredinio- and teliospores) on the leaves of aspen. Injures on aspen caused by pine twisting rust is not extensive. On the other hand, when it infects the annual shoots of Scots pine it often results in a bent steam or even a top shoot breakage.

What is customer satisfaction and when does it occur? Microsoft?s customers and partners state that product quality is the strongest driver for customer satisfaction. To be able to increase customer satisfaction Microsoft must know how their partners and customers define product quality. This study investigates product quality in general terms but also in the context of the product Microsoft Dynamics CRM in addition to experience from some of Microsoft?s customers and partners.

Testicular measurements and daily sperm output (DSO) are important factors affecting reproductive capacity of stallions. In the present study testicular measurements of 10 Swedish half-blood stallions were determined (height, length, width and volume). Ejaculates were collected from each stallion once daily for 10 days to evaluate some important seminal characteristics: gel-free ejaculate volume, sperm concentration, percent progressively motile spermatozoa and total number of spermatozoa (TSN). The gel-free ejaculate volume was measured with a graduated cylinder, the sperm concentration was counted in a Bürker chamber, the sperm motility was estimated in a phase-contrast microscope and TSN was determined by multiplying the gel-free seminal volume by the sperm concentration. Testicular measurements were as follows (left and right testis): height 7,5 cm and 7,8 cm, length 10,6 cm and 10,8 cm, width 6,5 cm and 6,6 cm, volume 278,2 cm3 and 293,8 cm3, scrotal width 12,3 cm and total testicular volume 572,0 cm3 .

In todays competitive business climate the concept of ?quality management? is a significant part of daily work for many companies, as they want to achieve high performance quality and delivery success. Within the services sector third-party logistics companies play an increasingly central role when it comes to the goods that are being transported. These companies are presented with continuous challenges to ensure that goods are loaded on trucks efficiently and delivered on time, at the right place and in the right condition. The present case study was conducted in collaboration with Schenker AB and Schenker Åkeri in Jönköping, to help these two company branches serving under the same major corporation to solve a common problem they both encounter, namely the fact that it regularly occurs handling abnormalities in the terminal process that affects overall quality for customers.The study aims to find out how the daily quality control concerning the handling of goods in the terminal process can be improved hopefully resulting in a higher quality in cargo shipments.

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).

The quality of bread wheat is a large subject to study. The quality rests on two legs. The first one is the inheritance of specific characters, which can be influenced through plant breeding and type of cultivar. The other one is the environmental influences, such as crop rotation, nutrition, harvest and storage. The latter factors are possibly to affect through cultivation practices, while other factors are not possible to influence on for the grower, such as seasonal changes of weather and the soil content.

Diet is mentioned by many seamen as a subject of joy and aims to give nutritional value and sufficient energy to manage a long working day at sea. The purpose with this investigation is to examine if there is a need among seamen to receive more information about diet regulations onboard and if they wish that it was shaped differently to meet their demands. The study is based on a literature part where diet regulations are examined and an interview part with semi structured qualitative interviews with five seamen. The conclusion of the study indicates that seamen have limited knowledge about the enunciation of the regulation, where it is to be found and consider it to be imprecise. Interviews showed that seamen believe that variety is the most important factor in diet intake and it was this expression that they primarily wanted stated in the regulations.

Higher demands of competitiveness and efficiency have led to increasing sizes of farms, with more land, more capital and more comprehensive logistics. The aim is to gain benefits of scale economies that reduce the production cost per unit. However, a greater extent of the business exposes the farm of increased risk where small deviations rapidly can erase the benefits. A modern dairy farm thus put high demands on the farmer?s ability to coordinate, plan and manage the forage production through the whole process until storage to obtain silage of the desired quality and quantity at the right price. The objective of this study was to design a simple model, i.e.