Abstract. Aim: The aim of this study is to determine certain health, demographic and socioeconomic factors that affect the costs for specialized health care between the municipalities within the Västra Götaland region. Method: The method is explorative and analytical. The costs for specialized health care was divided into three different subgroups; independent somatic specialized health care, specialized health care provided by private practices or outside the region and psychiatric specialized health care. The data was age-standardized.

The advantage and the possibility of keeping track of a number of vehicles to make work practice more effective and smooth is today a favorable choice for Visual Units Logistics customers. We?ve been evaluating the software and trying to take it one step further and letting not only the individual user, but maybe, the company as a whole benefit from its advantages. This has been done by using methods like letting ourselves get to know the software, user case studies, workplace studies, interviews and future workshops. This resulted in a prototype introducing a new function designed with all collected data in mind trying to make the software, Visual Units Logistics, even more effective for the every day work practice of the user.

The purpose of this essay is to identify costs for providing First-line and Second-line support, and then allocate these cost to different goods and services (cost objects) being supported. The thesis also intends to improve the overall cost awareness in IT settings..

As demand for renewable energy is increasing rapidly, the market for biomass pellets is expected to continue to grow in the near future. Most of the new raw materials that are discussed for pellet production have one thing in common; the production costs will increase compared to using traditional raw materials such as sawdust and planer shavings. The aim of this thesis is to investigate to what degree increased use of new raw materials for pellet production will affect the general pellet prices in Sweden and to survey what plans Swedish pellet producers have concerning new raw materials. To investigate the raw material situation of the Swedish pellet producers an industry survey was performed. Literature studies were also made on previous research in the subject field. Calculations of the production costs for pellets were done for the raw materials sawdust, wet sawmill chips and energy wood respectively. New raw materials are already used by the large-scale pellet producers in Sweden.

Today Scania give a high priority to the continuous improvements on the quality of their vehicles. To follow up the flaws in product quality, which are recognized by the repairs at the local workshops, material requests are carried through to be able to analyze the defects at the plant in Södertälje ? in purpose to improve the product quality. The material requests are also carried through to compensate the workshop for their expenses and to check that they are working according to the company?s warranty manual.Due to local routines and different distribution structures at the different markets the lead times and the costs caused by the flow of material are hard to estimate.

Evaluation of machinery costs is necessary for selecting appropriate farm machinery. Timeliness cost due to untimely operations is an important component of machinery costs. Timeliness costs can be high for crop sprayers, since pesticide application must be carried out within a short time interval. This Master thesis investigated the timeliness cost and the probability of a suitable workday for spraying. Timeliness factors were estimated for four different crops (oats, spring wheat, winter wheat and barley) using historical weed trial data.

Msc in Logistics and Transport Management.

The advantage and the possibility of keeping track of a number of vehicles to make work practice more effective and smooth is today a favorable choice for Visual Units Logistics customers. We?ve been evaluating the software and trying to take it one step further and letting not only the individual user, but maybe, the company as a whole benefit from its advantages. This has been done by using methods like letting ourselves get to know the software, user case studies, workplace studies, interviews and future workshops. This resulted in a prototype introducing a new function designed with all collected data in mind trying to make the software, Visual Units Logistics, even more effective for the every day work practice of the user. A new function to keep track of vehicles outside the main working area at the same time as you still can keep track of the other vehicles in the field..

The project has been done in cooperation with Schenker Åkeri AB in Sweden, Halmstad. Theproject is based on an inspection made by Arbetsmiljöverket, where they found minorshortcomings with distribution of goods for the employees. The project is an investigation ofthe drivers? working environment.Schenker Logistics is one of the world's leading providers of integrated logistics services.Schenker Åkeri AB is a subsidiary to Schenker Logistics and transports 2.4 million tons ofgoods yearly.The project started with a background study to evaluate drivers working environment. Wehave studied goods receptions, the working environment, strain injury and injury mechanisms.Methods used was observations, tests, questionnaire surveys and ergonomic andbiomechanical calculations.One result of the study is a working model, which gives recommendations for the maximumweight a driver should push and pull.

Competition of spruce fiber raw materials has increased dramatically in the last few years, leading to the fact that transportation costs in the current situation represents a much larger share of the total raw material cost. The Holmen-owned pulp industry Hallsta Paper Mill's location on the coast also constitutes a problem, because of the lack of raw material, which is much larger there, than for a pulp mill located in the hinterland. For a coastal industry it?s therefore natural to import much of the raw material by boat or to buy it from the timber terminals, in order to maintain good profitability. The purpose of this study was to analyze how the size of Hallsta Paper Mill timber supply area, without competition, with competition and with terminal use, affects the company ?s transport costs.

The purpose of this thesis is to map out and investigate how the banking sector affects a customer?s willingness to change bank, and what the switching costs are for a customer when making these changes. A case study was performed through qualitative and quantitative questionnaires and interviews. The qualitative part was carried out to create hypotheses. The hypotheses was tested in a quantitative survey to be able to either accepted or rejected these them.

This thesis has been made in cooperation with Forsheda Stålverktyg AB which develops and manufactures injection moulds and diecasting tools. The main concern has been their Trading-system which provides them with considerable amount of quality lost function.Focus has to however be put on the analysis of the Trading-system due to the fact that this has previously meant various quality issues for the company.This thesis treats quality assurance of the Trading-system, identification of the problems in the process and improvements of these problems.Quality assurance is carried out when a company detects that their quality based costs become too high. Quality based cost are? the costs that would disappear if a company's products and its different operational processes were absolute? (Sörqvist, 2001 p.30, free translation from Swedish). High quality based costs often result in increased quality problems, which can lead to substantial economic loss for the company.This work has resulted in a thorough review of the Trading-system whereupon problems have been identified.

This paper investigates the internal product costing system in one of the Swedish banks with the purpose to evaluate the quality of its product costs and possible implications on decision making. The study shows that the current system distorts product costs by, among other things, using relative allocation of costs and time and by allocating all costs to individual units of products. We therefore propose an alternative product costing system, which mainly draws on ABC theory but is also adapted to the specific needs of service companies and of the Bank. This proposal is intended as a solution in this particular case and not to be generalized in other contexts. We hope however to add to the understanding of why more complex costing systems, such as the ones based on ABC theory are, according to previous studies, not widely used in practice.

Handling product returns has become a critical activity for organizations as the volume of gods flowing back through the supply chain rapidly increases. Few research studies have published specific empirical data concerning the reverse logistics practices of companies. Information technology and information support has long been recognized as a competitive weapon ? capable of enhancing company performance and achieving efficient reverse logistics. Reverse logistics is very unlike the forward, as it is more reactive and also has less visibility.

Abstract. Title: Supply Chain Optimization ? for Sourced Production. Authors: Patricia Möller and Andreas Paulsson. Tutors: Jan Eskil Hollen ? Business Developer, Lilleborg as, Orkla, Everth Larsson ? Department of Industrial Management and Logistics, Division of Engineering Logistics, Lund University, Carl-Henric Nilsson ? Department of Economics and Business Administration, School of economics and management, Lund University.