This thesis is a product development project that was performed at Alfa Laval Tumba AB. In the past Alfa Laval have manufactured gas separators for engines where gas flows were cleaned from oil. A new business area for this kind of technology has shown to be the manufacturing industry where oil mist has to be separated from the vented air. Therefore a new and bigger design is needed to be able to handle the greater gas flows. A product like that would be a strong competitor on the market when the maintenance would be low in comparison to today?s equipment.During the project several concept suggestions were developed using customer interviews and research as input.

This study deals with one of the most discussed work environmental issues in the modern society of Sweden today - work related stress, its causes and how stress can affect people in their working situation. Our study is based on a questionnaire among aid handling officers in two municipalities of the middle of Sweden, and two interviews with their directors. We found that aid handling officers has a complex occupational role. We also found that the officers in these two municipalities experiences about the same level of stress.Further in the study, we will deal with whatever could be the cause of the stressful situation, using the demand/control model of Karasek and Theorell. The result shows that despite the similarity of the stress experience, the cause was shown to be different.

Children's Need In Focus (BBIC) is a processing and documentation system used in child welfare cases to investigate, plan and monitor interventions. The BBIC has had a breakthrough in Sweden and out of the country's 290 municipalities, there are 284 that use the system daily as a tool in cases involving children. The purpose of this study was to examine how social workers experience the BBIC as a working system and what strengths and weaknesses there are in the BBIC concept. We wanted our study to examine how the BBIC could possibly enhance the quality of childcare matters, but also how the BBIC could potentially increase children's participation in cases. We have performed qualitative interviews with eight social workers who work in four different municipalities where the BBIC is applied daily.

Today's planning strategy, densification of cities, makes it difficult for municipal authorities to find spaces to build preschools and daycare centers on. The Planning and Building Act , Chapter 8, § 9 states that " if the site should be developed with buildings that contain one or more dwellings or premises for after-school , preschool, school or other activities, it should be on the property or near it, enough free space which is suitable for play and being outdoors. " Each municipality has to define the expression enough free space and a number of municipalities have established guidelines for preschool and daycare centers concerning dimensions. The guidelines measure the number of square meters of free space per child with the aim of contributing to a qualitative environment. But the size is just one quality and the issue is how other non-quantifiable qualities are taken into account in the planning process. The paper compares three municipalities, Gothenburg, Malmö and Lund.

The Swedish welfare organisation is built on the fact that the legislation gives the municipalities and social workers guidance and direction how to assess cases. Through out this the clients have right to be assessed both equally and individually. How is this done? The purpose of this paper was to examine the effect of the organisation referred to the social workers ability to discretion and the evaluation of the assessment in first time applications of social assistant cases. The purpose was also to look for variations in decisions and if these could be explained out of organisational and assessment effects.

The possibility and the right to be able to communicate with municipalities or other state companies and politicians are natural for the Swedish citizens. However, they may be unaware that this communication process is called citizen dialogue.Today there are so many ways to communicate; one-way communication is not possible in the same way as before. It is above all social media such as Facebook, which has opened the gates one could only dream of.  Via a medium such as Facebook creates a strong citizen dialogue in which the municipality and citizens communicate openly and ask questions and give response.The purpose of this study is to find out how Karlstad?s municipality uses, and maintains, citizen dialogue on Facebook. What are the guidelines and how do the municipality use these? In this paper a qualitative expert interview and a qualitative content analysis has been used to answer the purpose of the essay.

The aim of this study was to examine the discourse of asylum seekers in Sweden from January 2009 to December 2013 in the newspapers Helsingborgs Dagblad and Dagens Nyheter. By using discourse analysis as a theory and method, combined with the theory of orientalism, I have analysed and compared news articles from these two newspapers. The findings of the study shows that asylum seekers are often portrayed as a group rather than individuals. Included in the group identity are several subgroups, for example asylum seekers are portrayed as victims, as a cost to society and as a highly suspect group that cannot be controlled. Furthermore, asylum seekers are depicted as ?the other? in contrast to the Swedish ?we?, where differences in culture and tradition are frequently mentioned.

Organic food is produced in a way that strives towards maintaining and improving natural resources. The welfare of both producers and consumers is central, also taking both animals and the environment into account. The Swedish government finds this important and in 2006 they made a resolution that the consumption of organic food should be stimulated. The goal was that 25 % of the municipalities? consumption of food should be organic in 2010.The municipality of Ludvika reached the government's target in 2011 and is currently increasing their proportion of organic food by one new product every year.  Ludvika is a member of The National Association of Swedish Eco-municipalities and the town of Ludvika is also a Fairtrade city.

Sweden has formulated ambitious energy goals which signify that by year 2050 the energy usage should be halved. One of the objectives is the reduction of energy usage by 20% by year 2020 and that it should be compared to the usage of energy from 1995. In parallel with increased energy requirements for buildings the demand on housing conservation, by highlighting also buildings from the last 50 years as part of the building heritage, continues to enhance, which in theory means that there is a conflict between these.The law will never be able to point out unique buildings and PBL (planning and building act) is not especially concrete. The National Housing Board has tried to make this more concrete by the new BBR regulations though there are still an enormous variety of interpretations.This report deals with the conflict between conservation requirements and additional insulation of the building envelope and is limited to multi-residential buildings built between the years 1945 and 1975. It is the stock with the greatest energy consumption and that is where the big challenge lies.

The private sewage systems in Sweden releases around 600 tons of phosphorus per year, compared to about 350 tons from municipal sewage treatment plants, and they account for approximately 21% of the total anthropogenic discharge of phosphorus into Swedish waters. About 40% of Sweden's nearly 1 million private sewage systems are inferior with respect to emissions to surface and groundwater. The technology of small sewage plants is under development and knowledge of treatment effects for different solutions is poorly consolidated. Municipal authorities lack resources to keep up with the technologic development and assess the reliability of the treatment performances that suppliers report for their products. The thesis aims to conduct a market review and evaluation of wholly or partially prefabricated small sewage plants, to make it easier for municipalities and property owners to assess different technical solutions. The goal is a compilation of the products on the market, evaluated on the basis of the reliability of specified degrees of reduction.Information on sampling procedures and test results were collected through a questionnaire to all active suppliers and the responses were then used to classify the products.

The energy in laundry rooms, in form heated air, can be utilized with a heat exchanger. A concept and an early prototype of the heat exchanger have already been developed to show that the theory works. This report describes the continued development and construction of the product.A field study was made in order to investigate the environmental usage and establish the product design. The most common washing machine was used as a calculation model, and calculations were also made to estimate the amount of energy in the air. A previous analysis of the existing prototype is also presented in this report, to show the products potential capacity.

A large number of children and teenagers are placed in foster care for various reasons. Social services have a responsibility to follow up youths and ensure that they have the same opportunity for positive development as other young people. A qualitative study was conducted with an abductive perspective by gathering material from social workers in this particular field. The research design of this study is an interview study. The theoretical premise was Bronfenbrenners ecosystem theory and Maslows hierarchy of needs theory.

This report is a market research for the company 4 Body and Mind, a start-upcompany that works with personal training online. They wanted to know if themarket for elderly care could be interesting for them to enter. This report is hence aresearch of the market for health and welfare technology in elderly care within thepublic sector in Sweden. A general fact is that the world's population is getting older.This combined with rapid growth of individuals in the age 65+ changes the demandson the elderly care in Sweden?s municipalities.

Lundbergs Plåt AB is a small company situated in Jönköping. Their main task is to process different kinds of steel such as stainless steel. Lately, they have shown an interest in Lean production.On the basis of the situation mentioned above, we developed the purpose to find and decrease the non value-added wastes in the production at Lundbergs Plåt AB. Out of this, we also developed and answered two questions: Which wastes can be found with help from a value stream mapping (VSM)? In what way can these wastes be reduced and how can these reductions contribute to an improved production? VSM is the method used to find the non value-added wastes.

More frequent and intensified rainfalls are expected to occur due to climate change in the nearfuture. This together with a higher proportion of paved areas increases the pressure on today?sstorm water systems (Risinger, 2014; Boverket, 2013; Stahre, 2006). Traditional storm watersystems (i.e. underground pipe systems) have during last decades started to be questioned(Olshammar & Baresel, 2012).