The educational underachievement of children in foster care has been known for a long time. This study aimed to compile and analyze the current knowledge about interventions, intended to improve foster children?s school achievements. The method used was a systematically undertaken narrative review. Despite a comprehensive searching strategy, only ten relevant studies were found, indicating that little has been done to improve the educational outcomes for children in public care.

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.

This diploma work addresses the question of how much energy is spent whenmanufacturing the components of a building as well as of how much energy is used inthe production of a building. The object of the studies is BioCentrum at the SwedishUniversity of Agricultural Sciences in Ultuna just outside the city of Uppsala. The aimof the work was to investigate how much energy was consumed when manufacturingand production in relation to the management, how many years the production wasrepresented. It was also a study in how mature the construction industry is to answerhow much energy was consumed in manufacturing.In order to get these answers a question form was developed and sent to thesuppliers to BioCentrum. In this form they were to respond to the quantity suppliedto BioCentrum and the amount of energy was spent when manufacturing thecomponents.

Med grund i kundens förändrade roll på marknaden har företag på olika sätt tvingats ändra sina produkt- och tjänsterbjudanden för att bättre möta kundens mer specifika önskemål och krav. Något som kommit att bli allt vanligare och användbart är att i varierande utsträckning involvera kunden i processen med att skapa den optimala produkten eller tjänsten. Att involvera sina kunder i skapandet av produkten påstås, tack vare graden av individanpassning, öka sannolikheten för att kunden ska bli nöjd. Kunden är idag dessutom mer mogen än tidigare och kompetent nog att kunna involveras i olika steg i skapandet av produkten. Ytterligare en effekt av den ökade kundnytta som kommer med medskapandet betonas vara en stärkt relation mellan företag och kund. En stark relation menas öka sannolikheten att få behålla de kunder företaget en gång lyckats värva.

Today automotive manufacturers are facing a crisis with increased pressure to strengthen their brands. To prevent declining results many automakers have chosen to extend its brand to other industries i.e. various forms of brand extensions. Automotive manufacturers have developed an international strategy for what merchandise to offer. The strategy has received an overall positive response, however, it does not apply well within the Swedish market where merchandise is sold in less quantity than abroad.

Lots of choices are to be made by a company who enters a new market with a new businessidea. Common questions that show up when a company is making it´s businessplan are how to target the market and how to use marketing as a tool to reach a specific customer or segment. It is difficult to know wether to target the market in different ways and what processes that can be used in the choice how to select the most potential and profitable customer. Another important question is how a company can positioning themself in a way so the customer will get a positive understanding of the company and what different positive abilities to mention in a possible businessproposal. This study is made on a small company in Sweden called AYEN Technology.

Sandvik Mining and Construction är ett affärsområde inom Sandvik-koncernen och en världsledande leverantör av maskiner, hårdmetallverktyg, service och tekniska lösningar för gruvindustrin. Produktprogrammet omfattar bergborrning, bergavverkning, krossning, lastning och transportlösningar.Uppdraget handlade främst om pulvertransporten som företaget vill automatisera för att förbättra ergonomin åt operatörerna som i dagsläget drar pulvertunnan i en spårbana. Under projektets gång har författaren tagit med nya mål som anses kunna integreras med automatiseringen av pulvertransporten, vilket var att hitta lösning för att köpa in en ny burkvändare och förbättra pulverhanteringen. Utöver detta hade företaget även övriga mål som gick ut på att lösningen bör vara säker utifrån produktionssynvinkel samt att man skulle ta hänsyn till damm exponeringen.För det framtida tillståndet har det under projektets gång analyserats hur planeringen arbetar samt hur produktionen fungerar i dagsläget genom att bland annat räkna fram viktiga nyckeltal för att kunna ta fram de enklaste och mest effektiva lösningar till målen som företaget satt upp..

While the call for regulations against greenhouse gas emissions are louder then ever before, demand for oil is also at an all time high. Oil companies face the dilemma of making sound business without being perceived as environmental villains. In this essay I will examine how BP, one of the largest companies in the world, broke rank with the industry and devoted itself to being an environmental friendly oil company. The actions and motives of this change will be evaluated through up-to-date theories about company motivation to environmental adaptation. We see that BP:s transformation can be well explained through Simone Pulvers theory about the socially embedded company.

Every year the Swedish government invests capital in different projects. In recent years the Swedish government has chosen to invest in design. The reason for this is that the government wants industry to use design as a competitive source. Two organizations, Svensk Form and Stiftelsen Svensk Indistridesign, have been assigned to improve industry and society?s under¬standing of design.

As the football industry develops into a highly competitive commercialized industry, football clubs must step up and improve their business strategy. This study focuses on the famous Italian club AC Milan, a club with many international titles but with declining revenues. The purpose of this thesis is to study how AC Milan can generate higher revenues by comparing its marketing and business strategy with the most profitable clubs in the world, the benchmarking partners Real Madrid and Manchester United. By using a benchmarking model, following the five steps of this process, conducting observation studies, an interview and examining secondhand information, gaps between the clubs were evaluated and analyzed. These evaluations became together with chosen theoretical references, the basis for the improvement suggestions and conclusions shown by the authors.

The purpose for this study is to look at the Pink Caravans, which is a Swedish travel company that started in the beginning of the seventies. The company today has a unique profile within the travel industry which made us curious about how they have managed to keep their distinctiveness over such a long period of time. We have chosen to focus on how they work with the market in this ever changing world, including aspects regarding for example the customer being more demanding today than before. We have also looked at a potential future for the company considering new trends popping up like the environmental issues. The study is based on a qualitative approach and a case study research regarding the Pink Caravans.

The  construction  industry  is  a  costly  business  such  in  respect  of  capital  for  most construction defects which then require rework, tear down and rebuild again. This study is  meaningful  awareness  of  tools  that  can  reduce  this  best  through  communication  and information sharing between the parties.  The  construction  industry  is  known  as  temporary  projects  organizations,  where  the construction  project  consists  of  several  actors  who  have  to  communicate  and  share information  between  them  to  avoid  mistakes  later  in  the  build  time.  These  actors  are bounded together thus for the duration of the project, then broken when the project has reached its end. The challenge here is for these actors to apply a tool that can help and simplify communications, information sharing, and perhaps the most important aspect is to  create  a  routine  for  the  association  and  the  shattering  of  these  actors.  To  implement such  behavior  using  a  tool  such  as  BIM  in  the  industry  whose  size  perhaps  is indescribable may be a very hard task.  BIM (Building Information Model) could be seen as the solution to this problem because it  acts  as  a  portal  where  the  actors  involved  must  sign  in  and  communicate,  share information, and eventually create a behavior, a routine for this association and division of  the  actors  following  the  end  of  the  project.  The  technology  could  help  the  involved from  the  beginning  of  the  project,  already  in  the  model  stage,  break  down  and  prevent any construction barriers when the building has been placed in the works.

Swedish sawmills of today suffer from unsatisfying economy with high costs and low benefits. The economical result depends on how well the sawmill can use their raw material. Iggesund Timber AB, a sawmill in the Holmen group, produces a large amount is enduse orientated products for the woodworking industry. Therefore the aim of this student thesis was to investigate the possibility of automatic enduse orientated quality grading of Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris) saw logs by using a gamma-ray log scanner. Iggesund Timber AB has the possibility to grade logs automatically with TINA, a two way gamma-ray log scanner. Grading and classification of Scots Pine logs in Sweden today are mainly manual but can in some rare cases be automatic.

This paper briefly summarizes Bergslagen as a bedrock province in order to give background to the genesis and presence of REE-bearing minerals (short for Rare Earth Elements) in the region. These mineralizations mainly occur along the REE-line, a line aproximately a hundred kilometers in length between Norberg in the north and Nora in the south with a width of a few kilometers. Situated in the southwest of Bergslagen it is currently one of only a few places in Sweden where REE-bearing iron oxide mineralizations are potentially economically viable for mining. Ore microscopy has been conducted in order to characterize an ore sample from Myrbacksfältet, one of few sulphide rich iron oxide mineralizations within the REE-line. Additionally, an electron microscope analysis of a sample from Stålklockan, a suspected REE-bearing mineralization also within the REE-line was confirmed by EDS (short for Energy Dispersive Spectrum) analysis.

Today, maintenance is a big part of the daily life on board ships. It is also one of the bigger expenses a shipping company has and without any loss of quality tries to run as economically advantageous as possible. In the hunt for economical savings the shore-based industry has subsequently applied the use of condition based maintenance, CBM, were a component is maintained according to its actual state. This leads to a reduction of maintenance costs since no parts are unnecessarily replaced. However, within the maritime sector a periodical maintenance is still the most commonly used maintenance system.The purpose of this paper is to chart the factors that are the reason for the low implementation of CBM on board the Swedish merchant fleet's ships.