This Master Thesis has been carried out in cooperation with Ursus Medical AB (URSUS) which markets, assembles and sells the Rotex Screw Needle Biopsy Instrument ®. The instrument is delivered with an instrument holder. Customers had expressed dissatisfaction over that they needed to use two hands during a biopsy procedure, which resulted in a project to develop a new instrument holder.The project aim was to create concepts for how the new instrument holder should be designed, with focus on the mechanics. The new instrument holder would build on the existing basic principle that the screw needle and the cannula were screwed into the tissue. The thesis work would result in a technical solution and a functional prototype of the chosen concept.To achieve this, a generic product development processes were used and began with a comprehensive literature review.

I denna uppsats har jag studerat förändringsarbete i samband med införande av Lean Healthcare. Arbetet har en abduktiv ansats där jag utifrån en fallstudie på Akademiska Sjukhuset i Uppsala har studerat hur de arbetar med förändringsarbetet. För att få insikt i deras förändringsarbete har jag intervjuat delar av personalen och deltagit i två av deras utbildningsdagar.Förutom en beskrivning av hur arbetet på Akademiska Sjukhuset är organiserat så innehåller arbetet även en stor teoridel som tar upp de grundläggande principerna i Lean-filosofin. I tillägg till detta så presenteras också en modell för förändringsarbete och jag har tagit med teorier som specifikt handlar om förändringsarbete i samband med införande av Lean Healthcare. Genom att jämföra teorierna med erfarenheterna från utbildningsdagarna har jag sedan kunnat dra slutsatser om förändringsarbetet.För att lyckas med Lean-implementeringen är det viktigt att inse att det kan finnas ett motstånd mot förändringarna.

Förändringsarbete är av en komplex karaktär, men en förutsättning för att företag ska kunna behålla sin konkurrenskraft. Det finns en mängd olika förändringsmetoder vars syfte är att effektivisera verksamheten. En av dessa förändringsmetoder är Lean som har sina rötter inom Toyota och dess produktionsmetod TPS (Toyota Production System). Lean syftar till att eliminera alla former av slöseri och därmed effektivisera en verksamhet. Studier visar på att företag i västvärlden har lätt att applicera verktygen och arbetsmetoderna inom Lean, men har svårt att ta till sig hela filosofin som ska genomsyra organisationen och dess kultur.Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilka de kritiska faktorerna vid en Lean-implementering är och hur dessa hanteras.

Detta arbete har behandlat frågan; om Lean produktion orsakat arbetsstress och om arbetsstressen hämmat innovationsutvecklingen..

Most people have been forced to throw away a pot-plant after its death. There are many reasons to the death of a plant, but mainly it?s because its owner forgets it, and therefore fails to water it. The purpose of this project is therefore to develop a product which can prevent this from happening, while the product has to have a low manufacturing cost to be able to compete whit other, similar, products on the market. During the project, a benchmarking has been done to give a clear picture of what the product has to compete with. The directives there are for CE-marking, and which of these who concerns the product has also been looked up.

AbstractLean production has become one common concept within industries to make the work more effective and to meet today?s hard competition. A challenge for Chinese production is the threat from new low cost countries. It will become very difficult to succeed to produce to a lower cost than these countries; this led to that Chinese companies must develop new strategies, according to Lee and Zhou (2000). This will put China in front of new challenges and new strategies can be needed to retain their strong competitive advantages.

Today?s market for companies doing statistical surveys is a market consisting of mostly standardized methods where differentiating your company from the competitors is hard. Simultaneously both the society at large and technology in specific is under constant development and everything needs to be done at a faster pace with better precision. One of the companies on the market mentioned above is Tradewell Group AB. During 2008/2009 Tradewell has developed a new method for doing statistical surveys. The method named by Tradewell is called Cellphone Survey System, CSS and include using existing technology in a, for this market, unknown way.

Title:Product abandonment ? A comparative study of five ABB-units Level:Master thesis in Business administration, spring 2011.Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to through a comparative analysis examine how different companies, within the same group, works with product abandonment and what factors influence the process.Problem:How important is situational and product specific factors in a product abandonment process in which the organizational factors are constant?Method:This study is based on primary as well as secondary data where interviews represent the primary data. Interviews, following the same interview guide, were made with five companies within the same group.Result:The results from the empirical studies presented in the text below recurring themes derived from the framework.Conclusions:Our conclusions are that the importance of product specific factors is of significant matters in a product abandonment process, even when organizational factors are constant. We base that on that although the companies are within the same group, under the same strategic direction and constructed according to the same organizational structure the product abandonment process is different for the respective companies.Keywords:Product abandonment, product deletion, product elimination, weak products, ABB .

The contact company, LRF Konsult, is a consulting firm specialized in areas of law, real estate, finance and taxation. Discussions on the subject of agricultural improvement in the area of Lean, has primarily been driven by the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, where LRF Konsult also participated. This thesis can be seen as a preliminary study of how Lean can work within agricultural enterprises.The thesis primarily focuses on the possibilities dairy farms have to improve operations. What practical benefits they can obtain through the implementation of Lean. And how an implementation could take place.By visits to two dairy companies, and through interviewing their respective business leaders, an image of the companies activity for improvement, in connection to this thesis was established.

Visualization plays a key role in the concept of Lean. Lean was developed in Japan as a business philosophy in order to lead to an activity, where only steps that contribute to customer value of the final product are being performed. By defining the customer value and establish visualized standards, it is possible to see when situations differ from the standard. Then it?s possible to lead the process back on track.

In the spring of 2009 Silva Sweden AB was contacted for a collaboration within the scope of a MasterThesis project. The company had discussed the possibility to develop a device that monitors usermovement during different types of exercise. The objective of this Master Thesis has therefore been todevelop and design a multi training device that records the user?s physical performance during severalactivities. The purpose of the thesis project has been to use scientific methods for product development inorder to design a multi device that supplements Silva?s range of products.The project followed a product development process divided into four phases; Market Analysis, ConceptCreation, Concept Development and Construction.

Barnoveraller är ett specifikt område inom klädesbranschen. Det ligger lång produktutveckling bakom, som har pågår under ett flertal år, vilket har förbättrat slutprodukten vad det gäller material, beläggningar och sömnadstyper.I B-uppsatsen finner du lättare materialinformation, konstruktionsinformation, nationella samt internationella standarder, krav ställda ifrån tre olika företag och utav ?barnoverallskunden?. Det här samarbetet blir vårt försök att bidra till barnoverallsmarknaden.Vi har utgått ifrån vår referens, ett privatägt barnklädesföretag från Bollebygd, Sverige.1 De har gett oss möjlighet att få vara med i produktutvecklingsprocessen och leta förbättringar som kan gynna slutprodukten och 2bseen som företag. Det har också gett oss möjlighet att skänka något litet (en sammanställning) som kan användas av fler företag i liknande bransch och situation.2bseen önskade sig ett samarbete där vår roll skulle innebära en fortsatt produktutveckling på befintliga produkter som i produktion fått ett och annat fel.Childrens clothing is a particular area of clothing business.

Metso Paper offers a front-running range of solutions and services for the pulp and paper industry. At the baling unit, design solutions are developed for manufacturing and handling of pulp bales. The machines are continuously developed to satisfy customer needs. One big step in the development of the baling line was to remove hydraulics from the machines and replace it with electrical motors and pneumatics. This was not done on the folding machine which is still driven by mainly hydraulics.

I denna fallstudie av Vara kommun har vårt intresse riktat sig mot införandet av Lean i kommunen. Arbetet med Lean inleddes 2004 och har hittills haft fokus på äldreomsorgen. Till grund för den insamlade empirin ligger 8 enskilda intervjuer med projektledare och resultatenhetschefer samt två fokusgrupper med medarbetare. Vårt syfte med denna studie har varit att studera införandet av Vara Lean och dess inverkan på såväl resultatenhetschefer som medarbetare inom äldreomsorgen i Vara kommun, samt att undersöka förutsättningarna för ett fortsatt arbete med utveckling genom Vara Lean.Resultatet visar att Vara Lean är ett tanke- och arbetssätt för att försöka finna ständiga förbättringar inom verksamheterna i Vara kommun. Medelst Vara Lean och dess verktyg, värdeflödeskartläggning och 5S, skall medarbetarna jobba effektivare genom att skapa standardiserade arbetssätt.

Launching and marketing a health food product is associated with larger problems than a launch of a traditional food product. There are several sales channels that can be used for a health food product, for example the product can be sold as a traditional food product, natural health food product or as a prescription drug. A smaller company can however experience problems while launching its product as a prescription drug because of the large costs associated with this particular sales channel. There is often no other alternative than to launch the product as a traditional food product, this can however create other problems because of the existing regulations on what can and cannot be mentioned in the marketing of a health food product. The limited amount of information about the product that can be enclosed together with it makes it hard for a company to differentiate and position it on the market.