Title: A study about the purchasing process of ITLevel: Master thesis in Information Technology and Business Administration, 15 hp, EIK024Authors: Emelie Johanson and Mikael LindströmTutor: Peter Ekman, Mälardalens HögskolaKeywords: IT-investment, purchase, decisionProblem: In the last decades the amount of IT investments increased and has become an important resource within most organizations. IT gives the ability to compete and could also be a condition for many to be able to compete. In different businesses it could vary in where they put their focus when they choose an IT investment. This thesis examines how the purchase process of IT looks. How does processes differs in a bigger company versus a smaller company? From these two perspectives this study examined these research questions: Who makes the decisions whether or not an IT solution should be purchased? What aspects decide when companies are to choose between different IT solutions? Where in the purchase process do problems usually emerge?Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the purchasing process of IT from a business perspective.

Volvo in Arvika produces wheel loaders, and the production is based on forecasts. When a machine is ordered, the customer can choose what type of equipment he or she wants, and these equipments are also made forecasts on. This is made by giving each equipment an estimated procentual usage that shows how many of the machines that will use this option. Today two people are working with the forecasts, planer A in Eskilstuna and planer B in Arvika. Planer A makes a forecast based on the historical outcome and planer B then makes adjustments of this based on how many options that are ordered.

People of the modern world consume more than they ever used to do. Because of the close correlation between consumption and the amount of waste, the waste volume is also expected to increase. The purpose of this study is to examine if some measures in the recycling process from Sweden could be implemented in Indonesia. In fact, Indonesia is one of the countries in which the waste management system is struggling. Tetra Pak, one of the world leading producer of food packaging, is studied in this report.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the co-creation process and how value is created based on a service orientation using a network perspective. The thesis is studied from a social-constructionist philosophy, using a qualitative approach of data collection and the theoretical framework includes network theories, theories of service-orientation and co-creation. We have conducted semi-structured interviews with a small firm and its network, which consists of a customer, a supplier and a partner. We found that Håkansson?s ARA framework combined with Ballantyne and Varey?s triangulation of value-creating activities help to acquire an understanding of the actors? bonds, the resources? ties and the activity links that exist in a network.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to understand how librarians develop their reference service. The purpose was to find patterns in how librarians work with reference questions. As a theoretical framework we have used research in the reference field. Where do the skills of the search process come from: education or experience? Answers were sought to the following questions: - How different are the search process in practice compared to theory? - Which similarities and differences are there among the informants? - How important was the education in comparison to the knowledge about the libraries collections? - How did the changes in the school system in 1993 influence reference education and what could the consequences be to the reference knowledge among librarians? We sent out a question form and a search question which was answered by 12 librarians in university and university college libraries.

This report is the result of a project in the course Independent Projekt in Molecular Biotechnology at Uppsala University during the spring of 2014. The foremost purpose of the course is to give students the opportunity to carry through exstensive work in a project environment. This project was formed based on a comission from the biotechnology company SweTree Technologies, and the goal has been to compose a summary of the different techniques and methods that exist in the field of mass propagation of trees through the method of somatic embryogenesis.The project group has obtained information about the area mainly throgh reading patents, trying to find key components and bottlenecks in other companies? somatic embryogenesis technologies. This paper is divided into different sections, containing the patents of the automation of different steps in the process.

AbstractThe development of the construction industry is slower compared to other industries. This implies that there must be improvements in this field. One step to increased effectiveness in construction projects is making the construction process more efficient, therefore resulting in a positive result for both the actual construction project and for the overall branch. The purpose of this study is to identify areas for improvement within the municipal housing company Gavlegårdarna completed construction project, who will then contribute to increased efficiency in their upcoming projects. The work has been performed with the help of two case studies examine construction projects "Fullriggaren" and "The three nursing homes." Opinions about what could have improved the efficiency of these construction projects further have been collected with the help of an interview study among some of the project participants involved in both projects.There have been many studies addressing the topic of how the construction process can be streamlined and similar studies that have been previously conducted.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the literary site Vulkan.se affects the conditions for publishing, distribution, incorporation in value systems and feedback in the literary process, as it appears in Lars Furuland?s model of this process. The purpose is also to propose an updated version of the model. This is achieved through a qualitative testing of Furuland?s theory.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine and question the use of mindfulness in the workplace. Mindfulness in the workplace can be understood as an organization recipe and is now a so called trend. We believe that there may be an issue of how mindfulness at work is advertised when it is described in such a way that it could be the solution to many organizational problems, such as reducing stress, increasing efficiency, creativity and productivity. To get a better understanding of what mindfulness is and what it can bring to a stressful work, we conducted semi-structured interviews with four mindfulness instructors. We analyzed the interviews from a theoretical analytical framework consisting of both a constructivist perspective and a power perspective.

This thesis work resulted in a template for how the thermal spray process can be controlled through robot programs. The robots today and their programs need to be replaced, therefore a new structure which can be matched with the new robot systems is needed. The work is limited to only concern structured programming on the new robots on Thermal Spray Centre (TC) with the programming language Rapid. The basic data for the program was retrieved from interviews with concerned personnel at TC, from studies on process parameters for thermal spray and from existing specifications at Volvo Aero Corporation (VAC). The thesis work briefly describes the process thermal spray and the four methods used at VAC.

Under senare år har allt fler organisationer och företag insett hur viktigt det är att identifiera och förstå sina processer, och för att kunna styra och utveckla dem, är det bra att veta vilka de är. Därför vill Reumatologi kliniken veta vad som händer med patienter som har psoriasis artrit, när dem är nyinsjuknade eller ska börja behandlas på deras klinik, samt hur hanteras smärtproblematiken, när de återkommer till kliniken, detta har vi gjort genom att kartlägga processer och sammanställa på vilka olika sätt dessa patienter hanteras på kliniken idag, vart remitteras de? Hur ofta förekommer detta? Vad gör att vissa remitteras och andra inte? Förslag på hur kliniken kan använda denna kartläggning i framtiden.Detta examensarbete genomfördes på uppdrag av:Centrum för Teknik i medicin och hälsa, CTMH, i samarbete med Karolinska Sjukhuset. Arbetet omfattar 15 högskolepoäng.Vid detta arbete har vi använt oss av djupgående intervjuer för att få en djupare insyn i den reumatologiska klinikens handläggningsprocesser. En konstruktionsmodell har utvecklats för att identifiera vilka intervjufrågor som är relevanta för detta projekt.

Forensic psyhiatric care protects the society by giving patients care to diminish risks of serious crimes. In their work the nurses use different care methods to help and support the patient in managing his or her life situation. To clarify how a group of nurses describe the nursing process in forensic psychiatric care. A qualitative study based on interviews. Six nurses were interviewed about their work in four different forensic psychiatric care units.

AbstractNowadays, companies and organizations manage large amounts of data to be used as support in decision making. A good solution for data management is in the form of data warehouses. A data warehouse is used to gather information from multiple sources within a company and arrange the information in a way that makes it easy to retrieve and analyze. Designing a data warehouse is not a simple task. The study herein will focus on what a data warehouse is and how the ETL process is used for data storage in the data warehouse. ETL stands for Extract, Transform and Load and is the process that retrieves data, transforms it and finally loads it into the data warehouse.

This paper describes the integration of environmental assessment in Swedish municipality comprehensive planning through a chosen case study. The implementation of a new EGdirective in Swedish law, concerning Assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment, should lead to some changes in the way Swedish municipalities' deals with environmental issues in their comprehensive plans. This could later on lead to new preconditions for municipality comprehensive planning. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the planning organisation in the municipality adapts to new regulations for impact assessment of comprehensive plans required by the Planning and Building act. Secondly the purpose was to partly participate in the early stages of the planning process and thereby indicate and identify possible environmental impacts regarding the aspects of land and water. This was done as a case study in a well defined part of the process.

The decisions for investment are forward-looking and the base of a long-term strategy. The research within investment have focused on diverse formulas which are used in financial assessment, which also should be complemented with qualitative evaluation. Consequently, the focus should not only be on the execution of the formulas. Less time have been spent on research concerning what actually initiates the investment proposals and affects the decision-making. This will be highlighted in this essay.