Concrete is a very common construction material. It´s characteristics are strength, durability and formablility. Superplasticizer is a common admixture, which changes the properties of concrete. Today (spring 2007) there are no certian mathematical methods to calculate the required percentage of this admixture needed to give the necessary set slump flow in the overall concrete recipe. Concrete batching companies must therefor experiment with different amount of superplasticizer in order to meet the specified slump and strength. The purpose og this report is to investigate if any mathematical relation can be established between the amount of superplasticizer used and the slump flow achieved. After carrying out some practical experiments using four different superplasticizers a direct relationship can be establish between the percentage of admixture used and the slump/flowability achieved. Unfortunatly at present due to the numerous variables, the calculation of mathematical formula can not be achieved..

Treatment wetlands been showed efficient for reducing pollutant in waste water. In Lajeado ? RS, Brazil the landfill has poor leachate water treatment. It is necessary to supplement the treatment plant because they need to reduce BOD, COD and nitrate of the water going to recipient. A subsurface flow wetland (SSF) can be a good choice.  In order to be able to design an efficient SSF it is important to understand how the grain sizes of a substrate affect the reducing of pollutants in waste water.

The following thesis concerns the conceptualization of openness within the open access movement. Open accesscan be understood as a phenomenon or a movement that aims at changing the current system of scholarly communication.Consequentially, the movements goals arose in relation to the escalating serials crisis in scholarly communicationand the increasing power of commercial publishers. The purpose of the thesis is to study three centralopen access declarations with the aim of uncovering the different conceptualizations of openness found withinthese texts. Leaning on the theoretical position known as actor-network theory, the declarations role within a surroundingnetwork is explored by focusing on how openness as a concept has been produced and reproduced bycentral actors. Two overarching questions frames the study: How is openness conceptualized within the declarations?And how can openness, as a concept, be understood as an effect generated by a larger network?The first part of the study focuses on the first question.

We have left the industrial society, and instead, we live in a post-industrial knowledge and information society. It is often said that industrial production has disappeared or that it has changed greatly. This means that fewer are employed in the manufacturing sector while the service sector is increasing, resulting in that the boundaries between production and administration decreases. The production goes from mass production to more flexible and specialized solutions. This puts greater demands on the logistics chain that continually need to work to meet customer requirements.

Denna uppsats behandlar en undersökning som gjordes efter det att en gymnasieskola i Örebro migrerat från Microsoft Office till Open Office. I studien undersöktes vilka för och nackdelar som lärare upplevde efter migrationen samt vilka problem som uppstod då öppen mjukvara används i en miljö som är dominerad av proprietär mjukvara.Det tillvägagångssätt vi valt är en metodtriangulering där vi samlat in data med hjälp av tre olika insamlingsmetoder, en litteraturstudie, kvalitativa intervjuer och en kvantitativ enkät. Dessa insamlingsmetoder utformades så att litteraturstudien var av bredare karaktär och leder till att intervjuerna blir av mer specifik karaktär som i sin tur ger oss kvantitativa frågor till enkäten.Det vi funnit under arbetets gång är att migrationen lett till interoperabilitetsproblem med existerande proprietära system och även att filer tolkats olika av de båda kontorspaketen. Lärarna såg större skillnader mellan de båda kontorspaketen är vad skolan och kommunen förutsett och tyckte att de mer avancerade funktionerna är svårare att använda i Open Office vi har även sett en efterfrågan utbildning..

On today?s competitive market, it is difficult to achieve profitability trough high prices on manufactured products. Profitability must be obtained through low manufacturing costs, high quality and short lead times. One of the companies on the market is Sandvik Coromant, manufacturer of tools and chips for metal cutting. This master thesis investigates the methods of manufacturing for boring bars at the manufacturing unit GVH4 at Sandvik Coromant in Gimo, Sweden.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate the presences of open-ended problems in the textbooks of high school Mathematics A. For practical reasons the study was limited to three textbooks and two topics, Fractions and Area & Volume. The Essay also describes the theory behind open-ended problems and why they should be used. I identify three criteria as a definition for open-ended problems. The study found that only 7,6% of the investigated tasks qualified, and met at least 1 criterion.

In todays' society e-commerce is growing at a rapid speed. 4,6 % of all retail sales on the Swedish market are done on the Internet. In the makeup category, which will be the category of focus in this study, 9 % of all the sales were done on the Internet during the last quarter of 2011. As it is today many suppliers do not have enough knowledge about e-commerce and instead of focusing on the development of the channel the focus should instead be on the development of the users of the channel.The purpose of this study is to understand the buying process with respect to the existing theories. The focus will be on the two stages information search and evaluation of alternatives.

The objective of this thesis is to map the resources and methods used at the department OPPC, at AstraZeneca, and derived from that give suggestions on possible solutions that will increase their productivity.Mapping of the product flow, as well as gathering of process data, has mainly been done using observations, but consultation with the process technicians has also played a great role. Further have theoretical methods been used, based on literature studies, within the areas of Lean production and statistics.The work has incrementally gone forward since the steps taken has been restricted by the irregularity of production which led to the need of creating a fictive production flow. This has affected the lead-time calculations in the way that they are meant to give an indication, rather than an absolute truth, on how different methods described shall be used.The current state analysis showed multiple areas of improvement when defining capacity as value adding time in relation to total throughput time. Using the "standard scenario" as a basis showed that the actual production flow only constituted 50% of the total project time. Further it showed that the workflow contained more non-value adding activities than value adding activities, which is a result of how the work is distributed within the department as well as in the different projects.

Since 2004, wind power has had the largest installation of new capacity compared to other energy sources in Sweden. Accommodating new wind power may require strengthening or rebuilding of the existing grid in areas where the grid is already loaded to maximum capacity. This master thesis examine the possibility of a new 400/130 kV substation in Yttermalung, Sweden, with a connection to the two neighboring regional grids in Dalarna and Värmland owned by Fortum. This substation would provide a new connection point to the Swedish transmission system as well as an interconnection of the two, currently separated, regional grids. Different expansion scenarios where a substation with and without series compensation or a phase shifting transformer (PST) to control active power flow were studied.

The thesis that follows is performed in collaboration with Nitator in Oskarström.The factory in Oskarström focuses on laser cutting, robotic welding and surfacetreatment of steel for the automotive industry.The project aims to streamline the flow of materials in production by automatingthe movements of the forklifts, running to and from the interlayer, and betweenworkstations.The project started with a systematic literature search. The literature searchshowed the research position around the AGV-system. Also a review of studentliterature was made, so that a suitable method for practical implementation couldbe developed and applied. Selected method uses both quantitative and qualitativeapproaches, which is analyzed by using triangulation.The work has resulted in a modified layout of the current facility in Oskarströmthat can be used for the implementation of the AGV-system. It has also resulted inthe tender documents and profitability calculation from several of AGV-suppliers..

In the year of 2009 the conditions for managing primary healthcare in the region of Västra Götalandchanged. The decision was taken by the regional assembly and resulted in that the citizens since thenhave had the opportunity to choose which health care provider they preferto stay with. Along with thisdecision a new market for private health careproviders was established, which resulted inincreasedcompetition between the providers.In order to manage the competition, the health care providers arenow forced to be more efficient in their operations andalso to beeven more focused on their patients.Backa Läkarhusgruppen is an example of a private healthcare provider in the region of Västra Götaland.In the same way it is also an example of anorganizationin need of analysing their operations to seehowit can be further optimized to meet patient needs and expectations.The aim of this study is to analyse Backa Läkarhusgruppen?s organization and its operationsin the hopeoffinding suggestions whichwill improve the patient flow.To allocate and solve the problems thatBacka Läkarhus suffer from,an approach inspired by Lean Healthcare is used throughout the report.Some of themost significant problems that were identified within the organization are:?The synchronization of demand and capacity is inadequate.?Absence of standardized routines.?Absence of present leadership.To be able to improve the patient flow Backa Läkarhus needs to handle these identified problem areas.By synchronizing the staffing level in relation to the trends in demand a reduction in the patient?swaiting times and throughput time will be possible. Creating clear responsibilities and routines for thestaff will contribute to a higher degree of patient focus and thus lead to a more efficient patient flow.

The aim with this independent degree project of master thesis is to find what the user opinions of the intranet in a county council is. The paper seeks how the question about how the culture in the organisation was affected by the use of the intranet. An important part is to explore the expectations and acceptance of the intranet and get a picture of which functions and services support day-to-day work with good quality. One goal is to find out how the intranet users feel that the communication, information and usability can be developed.The focus group interview is a qualitative method that has been applied for gathering data from the respondents, who participate in the investigation from the county council. The used method is unstructured focus groups containing the three dominating categories of staff in the county council.

In the last decades, lean production has proven to be one of the most important organizational paradigms in manufacturing. The lean concept has also spread into the service industry where it is applied within a range of different areas. The wide applicability of lean principles has spurred the authors of this study to apply the principles in the context of the operations of a Swedish remand prison. The thesis examines the process a client of the remand prison Häktet Kronoberg goes through from the time of arrest until he/she is released or convicted and transferred to jail. Based on lean tools and principles, the thesis maps and analyses this process.

A district heating plant has the advantage that it can take advantage of the waste heat from industries and use of cheap fuels to produce heat. But for the long term is competitive requires that energy is also saved in district heating plants. One way to save energy in a district heating system is to increasing cooling to the return temperature. This leads to less power needed to drive the distribution pumps,  and that more energy could be extracted from the same amount of fuel by an improved flue gas condensation.In Karlskoga the return temperature into the district heating plant is high. They would therefore reduce the return temperature in order to extract more energy from the flue gases.