I dagsläget är det svårt för företag att behålla en stark marknadsposition och utmaningen ligger dels i att regelbundet presentera nya produkter på marknaden och ständigt skapa nya innovationer. Genom att använda sig av Lean Product Development i produktutvecklingsprocessen kan företagen anta utmaningen. Det kan dock vara svårare för små och medelstora företag då de kan ha begränsade resurser. Syftet med denna studie var därför att ta fram en projektmodell för produktutvecklingsprojekt i små och medelstora företag. Studien bygger på kvalitativa forskningsmetoder där sekundärdata samlades in genom både bibliotekskatalogen vid Mittuniversitetet och sökningar i forskningsdatabaser på Internet.

In recent years, Lean has been implemented in a variety of companies with focus areas that differ from the conditions that characterizes manufacturing. This transfer has contributed to fairly superficial results because companies almost exclusively focus on Toyotas methodology and not on the goal of Lean. The effort of transforming Lean from manufacturing to any organization requires a definition on a general level and a view of Lean as a system. One of the core principles of Lean and the foundation of continuous improvements is standardized work. In product development there is a negative view on standardized work, where the engineers state that the principle is not applicable for knowledge processes that include non-repetitive and creative work.In the framework of this master thesis literature has been studied to find support that standardized work is applicable for product development and areas that include knowledge processes.

One of the main goals in this study is to investigate how young children's identity formation and social relationships are depicted by today's consumer society.  In order to reach the goals of the study I also concentrated myself on questions regarding the reflection of symbolic aspects consumption in younger children's interaction and preschool-teachers' ideas about how and in what ways children's consumption patterns are created and developed nowadays. In order to answer the presented research questions I used the theoretical arguments of researchers in the field of pedagogy Gert Biesta in connection with the ideas and concepts of the consumer society characteristics developed by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.The thesis' methodological approach consists of a combination of semi-structured interviews with teachers and observations of children's interaction, which contributed to a systematic investigation of the thesis' problem area and served as a tool for obtaining answers to the research questions.The results demonstrate that consumption occupies a lot of space in young children's lives, which means that it greatly affects their social relationships today. Both consumption and knowledge of the known brands prove to be the child's path to the desired community on the one hand, and the children's way to the consumer world on the other (hand), which in turn points to an obvious dependence between children's consumption and their social relationships.The results also show that there is a tension between the perception of identity formation as preschool-policy-document on the one hand and the attitude of the identity prescribed by consumer society norms and regulations on the other..

?CSR and political consumption ? a study of Nike?s and Puma?s CSR-reports?The purpose of this dissertation is to examine if political consumption has influenced multinational corporations to improve their Corporate Social Responsibility reports and policies more, than a company who has not been a target for political consumption.This dissertation is a content analysis of Nike?s and Puma?s first (Nike 2001, Puma 2001) and latest (Nike 2007/09, Puma 2007/08) CSR- reports. Archie Carroll?s model of Corporate Social Responsibility is used as theoretical framework in this study. The model is used to focus on four areas within CSR; economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic.

Att införa ett nytt produktionssystem är ett stort projekt som påverkar arbetssättet för en stor del av de anställda i ett företag. Detta gör att det finns många ytor där problem kan uppstå och viljor kollidera. Stora förändringar kan riva upp invanda mönster och bryta mot den nuvarande kulturen i organisationen och därigenom skapa osäkerhet och ovilja gentemot förändringen.Denna rapport är tänkt att fungera som ett stöd för BT och Siemens i deras arbete med att införa nya, lean-baserade produktionssystem genom att försöka finna de kulturella hänsynstaganden som måste tas för att implementeringen av dessa ska bli framgångsrik. Specifikt syftar rapporten till att undersöka varför vissa människor är positiva till lean och varför vissa är kritiska. Vilka aspekter är det som folk finner attraktiva respektive mindre attraktiva?Resultaten av undersökningen visar på att medarbetarna finner grundläggande drag inom lean, såsom ständiga förbättringar samt medarbetarnas möjlighet att själva vara med och påverka, som positiva.

Simulation of different systems can be done using a graphical model description of the system based on block diagrams. The simulation software Matlab/Simulink offers a lot of possibilities to describe a huge number of systems, which can be linear as well as nonlinear. The simulation using Matlab/Simulink is done by integration based on different kinds of numerical methods.When nonlinear Simulink-models are simulated, it is often interesting to apply a Kalman filter to handle the noise that may occur within the process as well as corrupting the measurement. However, application of such a filter leads to an extensive time-consumption despite using fast computers. The reason is that the existing Matlab functions are not constructed for time optimal evaluation.

Mapping a process enables a greater understanding of the work, and is standard to evaluate and improve a process. This thesis is conducted at Test Bed Mechanical Design at Scania in Södertälje. Test Bed Construction is a complex process, characterized by a large amount of creative work, technical challenges and coordination between different people and different organizational functions.The aim of the thesis was to identify the Test Bed Construction Process and to develop a visual model of the workflow that also served as support for the engineers in their daily work. During the mapping process, comparisons were made with previous research in lean product development to identify process improvement.A literature review on process mapping and process visualisation resulted in a method for process mapping. The study showed that research on process visualisation is neither structured nor well defined.

Problem, Lean är en arbetsmetod som blir allt vanligare inom offentliga förvaltning eftersom det förväntas effektivisera verksamheten. Ett krav som allt fler organisationer behöver ta ställning till.Inom akademiska kretsar diskuteras leans effektivitet samt vad som egentligen ingår i begreppet. Trafikverket har implementerat lean som arbetsmetod inom en specifik del av organisationen, vilken berör Trafikingenjörer från sex olika regioner. Syftet är att effektivisera fyra olika arbetsgruppers ärendehantering. En tidigare kvantitativ undersökning har visat att upplevelsen av lean och av dess implementering varierar i de olika regionerna.

The objective of this work was to evaluate and implement a number of energy saving functions for a specific embedded system. The functions were then grouped into a number of energy levels with known properties in terms of functionality, energy consumption, and transition time between the levels.The embedded system consisted of an AT91 ARM9 processor, GSM/GPRS modem, display, Ethernet and other peripheral units. Some energy saving methods that were considered were suspend to RAM, suspend to disk, frequency scaling, and methods for saving energy in the modem, Ethernet, USB and display backlight. The functions were grouped into levels and an interface was specified for controlling the energy level.It proved possible to get known properties within the defined energy levels, even though the paritioning of functions into these levels proved to be sub-optimal in a typical application usage scenario because it was designed for mainly energy consumption, not usage.The final result is a number of energy saving functions grouped into levels, which are controllable via an application interface. Each of the levels have a known energy consumption in both loaded and un-loaded mode..

The aim of this study is, using the Swedish expression ?kulturtant? (cultured lady) as starting point, to understand how and why women consume the products of the culture industry more eagerly than men. The study is using the concepts put forward by Pierre Bourdieu; fields, capital and habitus. It is a qualitative study based on discussions in focus groups, interviews and material gathered through Google Alerts. In the literature this gap between the sexes with regard to the higher consumption on behalf of women has been referred to as the ?puzzle? of women´s cultural consumption.The empirical results show that the women in the study are well aware of what they want to gain by participating in cultural activities like reading, going to concerts, watching plays or going to the movies.

Denna rapport fokuserar på lean systemutveckling inom multiprojektorganisationer. Dessa organisationer står idag inför problemet att hantera flera parallella IT projekt samtidigt som kraven ökar på att leverera mer effektivt. Nyckelord som nämns är lean, agila arbetssätt och scrum allt för att effektivisera och arbeta smartare, detta medför förändrade arbetsprocesser, attityder och beteenden. En huvudtanke är att om man investerar mer tid och pengar i att systematiskt arbeta med förbättringar kan man drastiskt minska företagets kvalitetsbristkostnader varigenom verksamhetens totala kostnader minskas (Sörqvist, 2004). Erfarenheter från verksamheter som framgångsrikt arbetat med ständiga förbättringar, t ex Toyota, har i praktiken styrkt detta resonemang.Syftet med denna rapport är att analysera hur en förändring i ledarskapsfilosofin, som lean är, påverkar organisationen den appliceras på.

The objective of this work was to evaluate and implement a number of energy saving functions for a specific embedded system. The functions were then grouped into a number of energy levels with known properties in terms of functionality, energy consumption, and transition time between the levels.The embedded system consisted of an AT91 ARM9 processor, GSM/GPRS modem, display, Ethernet and other peripheral units. Some energy saving methods that were considered were suspend to RAM, suspend to disk, frequency scaling, and methods for saving energy in the modem, Ethernet, USB and display backlight. The functions were grouped into levels and an interface was specified for controlling the energy level.It proved possible to get known properties within the defined energy levels, even though the paritioning of functions into these levels proved to be sub-optimal in a typical application usage scenario because it was designed for mainly energy consumption, not usage.The final result is a number of energy saving functions grouped into levels, which are controllable via an application interface. Each of the levels have a known energy consumption in both loaded and un-loaded mode..

Bakgrund och problem: Begreppet Lean härstammar från Japan och har sitt ursprung i Toyotasframgångskoncept TPS (Toyota Production System). Under 1970? och 1980?talet blev de tre störstabiltillverkarna i USA intresserade av Toyotas sätt att utföra sin verksamhet vilket ledde till ettforskningsprojekt. Resultatet från studien kom att kallas Lean Production och kan ses som en renamerikansk kopia av Toyotas sätt att bedriva sin verksamhet. Konceptet har vidare kommit att spridasig över hela världen och i Sverige har ett flertal företag kommit långt i sin omställning till LeanProduction.

Heat is distributed to the district heating customers through pipes with water as a heat carrier. The district heating system is complex. To decide what is leakages from the district heating net versus what is the water consumption of the plant, is difficult. Therefore, the purpose of this master thesis is to establish a model where the district heating net?s leakages but also the water consumption of the plant can be followed daily. The project is performed at Vattenfall´s district heating power plant in Uppsala. Information is gathered through discussions, drawings of the plant and guided tours of the plant.

Stump harvest could be found in the late 1970?s and the early 1980?s. And now when the prices on energy are high it has become an interesting topic again. This work has been conducted within Holmen Skog?s stump harvest testing in Norrköping.