Due to an increasing global market with a growing competition and an escalating technologydevelopment the demands on companies today are increasing. To maximise the output fromtheir recourses they need to be more efficient. The research on product development and how toensure the efficiencies in the process are extensive and companies could by adapting andimplementing the result of this research use its benefits.This master thesis is made for Knightec AB with the aims that through interviews anddiscussions with three companies investigate, collate, justify and give proposals for productdevelopment process together with supporting methods and procedures for technical projectmanagement. Besides Knightec AB three other companies located in Sweden has beenparticipating in this study. Through semi structured interviews and discussions in focus groupsinformation from the three involved companies were obtained.

Objective: From the patient?s perspective describe communication difficulties, which can arise, and how they are handled in their contact with public health care and illustrate their needs of communication.Method: A study of literature was carried out to receive a background and an insight in previous research concerning the subject area. Twelve women with hearing loss was asked to complete a questionnaire, with open questions, regarding communication difficulties in health care situations.Sample: For the literature review, scientific papers were selected via the database, PubMed using relevant keywords. Seven were selected for closer review. For the survey study twelve women were asked to participate which ten of those responded.Results: The study of literature shows that communication difficulties occur in public health care between patients with hearing loss and the nursing staff.

The process of food production has changed dramatically over the past one hundred years. Industrialization has led to large units of production, manufacturing, distribution, marketing and retail business. The final food product, in this system, is quite often fairly anonymous and the consumer will most likely know very little concerning the origin of the product. In recent years, the market for locally produced food has grown. There is an increasing interest in and demand for locally produced food items.

Background: Fibromyalgia is a disease wich involve cronic pain and fatigue. The disease has appeared for a long time, but it has resently become possible to diagnose. It is still unclear what cause the disease, and the treatment of it is therefore still diffuse. The lack of knowledge leads to a lot of discussions and the diagnosis is questioned. Purpose: To study how patients with fibromyalgia experineces the attitudes from staff in hospitals and health centers.

The purpose of this article has been to elucidate social secretaries? and teachers? experiences of collaboration around children in need of society?s intervention. We wanted to examine what the difficulties could be, according to their experience, and how they handled them. Additionally our aim was to analyze whether their method of dealing with the obstacles were likely to succeed, viewed from the perspective of system theory. In order to achieve our purpose we used a qualitative method and interviewed four social secretaries and four teachers.

SJ is a government-owned passenger train operator in Sweden. SJ currently uses asystem called Ford for control and monitoring of maintenance. Technical andorganizational factors have given Ford the character of a monolithic system withoutflexibility and conditions to meet SJ's increased requirements.The main purpose of this master's thesis is to investigate how data quality can bedefined at SJ and to examine the data quality in Ford. This will give SJ an indication ofwhat their quality efforts should focus on in the future.The technical data quality parameters found are: accuracy, timeliness, completenessand consistency. The user centred data quality parameters are: accessibility,understandability and reliability.

The aim of this study was to investigate a health intervention at a Swedish telecom company, with regards to behavioral, cognitive and somatic stress, experienced health, and absence due to illness. A further aim was to investigate the employees' perceptions regarding the health intervention. Questionnaires were collected from 139 employees at the customer service departments.Results indicated that the health activity bowling to some extent could predict lower behavioral stress. However, the most important predictors of stress and perceived health were lack of meaningfulness and quantitative demands. Lack of meaningfulness was also a predictor of absence due to illness.

Background: Balanced scorecard is a relatively new strategy in analysing activities in a company. To carry out a strategy in an organization a successful implementation is very important. Strategy implementations are unique for each organization and to succeed it has to be formulated and implemented with the individual companies particular conditions as starting- point. A problem is that the implementation sometimes is treated as a small detail in the planning process. This problem depends on how the strategic plans is carried out.

Background:Life-cycle costing (LCC) is an investment calculation that takes intoaccount operating costs throughout the investee lifecycle. LCC calculations are mainly usedto evaluate investments that have no revenue side. Attempts to apply the LCC calculations forbuilding-related investments have occurred since the 1980s. Despite the advantages ofusing LCC calculations, use has not passed through in full. The main obstacles have beenidentified as a lack of relevant input data, and insufficient experience of workingwith LCC calculations.

Nurses in health care have a responsible and sometimes stressful job. Nowadays there?s a high pace in health care where many decisions have to be made during time pressure, a lot of information has to be transferred between health care units and sometimes complicated equipment are used. Cases of mistakes are reported more than ever to the national committee responsible for health care. Many of the mistakes, where the nurses are involved are due to the nurses? stress.The aim of this study was to gather information to describe causes of stress in nursing care and the nurses? experience of stress influence on health care.The method that was chosen for this study was a literature review where scientific, critically reviewed articles were analyzed.  The analysis resulted in two main themes.

In this essay I consider a self-experienced dilemma, and review how I, as a preschool teacher, treat a child with special needs. With the support of literature and theory, I can, with an essay writing approach, reflect and analyze the dilemma. In this way I will examine my practical knowledge and personal experiences of a complex situation. I want to examine whether children with special needs who are included in regular preschool activities, really get the support they need and deserve. Do educators have the conditions and does preschool have sufficient resources to realize this? Do educators have sufficient knowledge of how children with special needs should be responded to? I want to find out how the included children's social development and self-image is shaped by the treatment they receive at the preschool.

Among the Indigenous cattle breeds in Indonesia, the Bali cattle is the most preferred by small farmers. The Bali cattle is a beef breed, and is considered to have several advantageous characteristics and to be well adapted to the country?s harsh environmental tropical conditions with drought and rain. The main aim of this project was to phenotype of Bali cattle from different locations in order to identify and document diversity within the Bali cattle breed based on their observable characteristics, to compare cattle from different areas and production systems to see the effect of management on phenotype. In this study, 107 cows and bulls of the breed Bali cattle, from Kalimantan, Sumatra, Lombok and Bali were phenotyped.

The objectives of this research were to determine whether the natural rattan resources in Sulawesi, Indonesia can cope with the strongly increased harvesting pressure that has occurred over the last centuries. I was furthermore looking for patterns in the rattan population dynamics that might give a hint on how the harvesting system could be improved to ensure a maximum sustainable yield. To answer these questions, I developed an individual-based model to analyse the dynamics of rattan growth in connection with rattan harvests by locals to identify sustainable levels of rattan harvests around villages in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Scenarios with different harvesting intensities were run to compare the change in harvest amount. For a given harvesting pressure, scenarios with a high number of harvesters and a low harvesting frequency had the same effect as scenarios with high harvesting frequencies and a low number of harvesters.

Background:Life-cycle costing (LCC) is an investment calculation that takes intoaccount operating costs throughout the investee lifecycle. LCC calculations are mainly usedto evaluate investments that have no revenue side. Attempts to apply the LCC calculations forbuilding-related investments have occurred since the 1980s. Despite the advantages ofusing LCC calculations, use has not passed through in full. The main obstacles have beenidentified as a lack of relevant input data, and insufficient experience of workingwith LCC calculations.

AimThe general aim with the study was to investigate what the reasons for quitting and/or continuing with a sport are, using competitive sailing as an example.MethodsThe used method was partly a survey investigation of 20 people and partly deep interviews with 8 of the persons who responded to the survey investigation. The respondents in the investigated group are all former active sailors within the Aland Island Yacht Club. Half of the group have continued sailing actively since the optimist class and the other half have quit competitive sailing. In the survey 15 men and 5 women participated and in the deep interviews 4 men and 4 women participated. The survey covered a great age span.