Companies in the western world can no longer compete by using traditional means such as product and price since the commerce of services continually grows. To avoid similarity and increase competitive advantages modern companies have to be more specified. The competition between companies has increased and customers are harder to reach. Customers of today can afford luxury but trend indicates that originality, identity, and status are more important than factual needs. Products created and consumed at the same time within the service market are often very homogenous (similar).

This technical report describes the master thesis in material engineering called ?Testing of surfaced hardened materials conceivable for gears and shafts?. The work extents 20 academic points. Land systems Hägglunds manufactures and sells different kinds of combat vehicles and terrain vehicles. Since the demands for bigger and stronger vehicles increases all the time, so are the demands on shafts, gears and other transmission details.

In this thesis is studied the electrical load of Paradisskolan with respect to power quality and energy consumption. The school's owner Trollhättans Tomt AB is also interested to know if they can reduce their costs by changing to smaller meter fuses. A recurring ground fault that?s been recorded from powerpanel A1A has been investigated. The school's equipped with an electrical bonding system, harmonic filters for the third harmonic currents, TN-S system from feeding transformer and groundfault monitoring.

The primary purpose of this study has been to investigate the Swedish timber industry?s perception of compression wood. A secondary aim has been to describe particular areas within the production process where compression wood is likely to cause problems. This study has mainly been carried out as a questionnaire. In order to connect the findings to current research, additional information has also been collected by means of a literature review. The questionnaire has been intended for sawmills and wood-manufacturing companies from various production classes and owner categories, as well as from different parts of the country.

The Swedish cooperative Lantmännen Ekonomiska Förening has initiated a project labelled "Operation Blåljus" that includes an extensive program for closing down elevators. The number of elevators will be reduced from 92 to approximately 15 after harvest of 2007. The objective of Blåljus is to increase the price of grain with 10 öre/kg. A project has been initiated at the Lantmännen Grain division where the purpose is to provide the farmers with support in their decisions and practical advice how they can load a 35 ton grain truck on 30 minutes. The result from the project will serve as a support system to the farmer in his ambition to achieve cost efficient systems to load a truck with grain on the farm.

Vole populations in northern Scandinavia vary in cycles with peaks every third or fourth year as described by the National Environmental Monitoring Programme of small mammals (NEMP). Some vole species have declined in population numbers since the NEMP started in 1971, especially the grey-sided vole (Myodes rufocanus) which is nearly extinct in the forested region. Since small mammals are an important food source for several avian and mammalian predators, the decline in vole numbers is expected to have consequences for the whole food chain, especially if other vole species start to decline in numbers. This study tried to test the hypothesis that presence and abundance of M. rufocanus (a specialist species) and Myodes glareolus (a generalist species) can be predicted by patch size and connectivity of forest patches >60 years old with a minimum of 15% pine >100years old.

Today's high oil prices and more stringent environmental requirements have led to that manufacturers of mobile construction equipment try to make their products more energy efficient. With this in mind a project about hybridization of hydraulic systems has been formed. The purpose of this project was to analyze the savings that can be achieved by hybridization of hydraulic systems. A reach stacker truck (Kalmar DRD450-80S4XS) were simulated in some load cases with conventional hydraulic systems and with three types of hybridized hydraulic systems. Different parts of the hydraulic systems were also analyzed separately.

The objective with this project was to design a new lifting aid connected to toilet chair.A questionnaire distributed at three homes for aged people indicated that there was an interest in a mechatronic lifting device.Since existing products have limited tilting functionality, the new design was chosen to introduce lifting by motorised tilting of the sitting platform. The mechanical construction was analyzed based on a maximum load caused by a person with weight 160 kg. Two linear actuators were used to control the tilting/lifting of the sit ?place, making standing-up easer.Finally, 28 persons tested the new lifting device and gave their impressions. Many appreciated the safe, stable lifting speed.

Many buildings are now nearing the end of their service life. This applies to both the older houses from the 40's and 50's to the million project houses that did not prove to be as sustainable in the long run. Often there is a desire to extend the service lifetime, but to do that you need to make detailed inspections. The Folkets hus in Gävle is one of those buildings that is in need of renovation and to fulfill the new requirements that must be met in today's buildings. It is desired to make the buildings rentable space more attractive and to extend the building with two more floors.

Cykelstölder är ett stort problem i dagens samhälle. I Sverige polisanmäldes 65 700 cykelstölder under 2011. De cykellås som finns på marknaden kan på ett eller annat sätt brytas upp och efter det är cykeln fullt brukbar. Examensarbetets uppdragsgivare hade idéer om ett nytt cykellås som förhindrade cykelns brukbarhet efter uppbrytning av låset. Idén ledde till ett samarbete med uppdragsgivaren, mig och teknikkonsultföretaget, Cross Design.

Is Försäkringskassan, one of Sweden?s largest organizations, an equal place to work in? Dosex, ethnical background or age matter when being treated by colleagues and managers?In this thesis I try to, through interviews with both the Human Resources-departement andsome administrators at Försäkringskassan, find the answers to how the organization?s internalwork regarding equality functions. To help me with the analysis I use both discourse theoryand gender theory. I find a discrepancy between the Human Resources-department?s and theadministrators? view of how the internal equality work is run.

The milk production per cow has increased considerably during the last 50 years and due to the breeding for higher milk production also brings decreased reproduction efficiency. In a Swedish study 1996 it was shown that on average only half of all estruses were detected. Every time a farmer fails to detect oestrus it costs the farmer about 1200 Swedish crones and the need of means of detecting oestrus is therofore large. With this study we wanted to investigate if heart rate respectively crystallisation of vaginal mucus (arborisation) could be useful means of detecting oestrus. We monitored two oestrus cycles in four heifers.

Käppala wastewater treatment plant situated on the island of Lidingö northeast of Stockholm is running a project during 2004 and 2005 with the purpose to map out the capacity of anaerobic digestion in the digesters that treat primary and excess sludge. The purpose of this thesis work, which is part of that project, was to characterize the present anaerobic digestion process and to investigate its capacity to treat other organic wastes such as restaurant waste and waste from water works. To decide the potential of both methane and biogas production from different substrates batch laboratory tests were carried out. To imitate the anaerobic digestion process at Käppala continuous tests with small scale reactors were carried out. These reactors were later fed with restaurant waste.The batch laboratory tests showed that primary sludge had a potential biogas and methane production of 0,62 and 0,35 Ndm3/g VS respectively after 40 days of digestion.

The results from 13 interviews and one opinion poll answered by resident physicians were interpreted as stories about identity as primary material for this thesis. The resident physicians stress the importance of considering whether their work primarily concerns curing people from diseases or if the process of working with sick people also includes how to handle the pressure of work, either by adapting to it or changing it, and the search for balance between work and private life. Residents separate themselves from older physicians by saying that younger physicians accentuate empathy to a greater extent while older physicians emphasise a high work load. Identity seems to effect how the residents perceive and relate to their work, themselves as residents and different types of patients..

Östby waterworks in the community of Kramfors has since 2003 had problems of fast clogging of the slow sand filters. As the clogging appears more often, they must be cleaned more frequently which has made the drinking water preparation difficult. Wintertime it has sometimes been impossible to clean the filters which has led to their closing and this has influenced the water quality negatively.The waterworks is a surface waterworks which takes its raw water from the lake Sjöbysjön. The water is flocculated and filtered in a contact filter with the flocculent EKOFLOCK 91. Thereafter it is alkalinized before it reaches the outdoors placed slow sand filters.