The project was performed in collaboration with Husqvarna, one of the world?s leading manufacturer in the market of electric outdoor products. The report is a thesis work of a bachelor mechanical engineer program, in the field product development and design.The project is a study of the development opportunities within drive belt for a gear driven gearbox to one of Husqvarnas petrol powered hedge trimmers. A big part of the project was also to find combinations of materials for all components in the gearbox, to reduce weight and maintain or improve the performance of the system. Belt drive was of interest to investigate as an alternative solution to the current design that can reduce wear on the system at a performance test performed in the company before the product is released to market.

In this paper we investigate 67 Swedish buyouts in the manufacturing and retailing sector between the years 2004-2012. The purpose is to measure changes in a set of financial key ratios to see if private equity firms are able to improve performance in their portfolio companies compared to a peer group consisting of other firms within the same industries. Furthermore, we examine if there is a difference in the change of the financial key ratios between private equity-owned firms in the two sectors. The key results are that the private equity owned firms have not outperformed their peers with respect to the chosen key ratios. We also conclude that there is no significant difference in the change of the financial key ratios between private equity-owned firms in the two sectors..

The background to the study is that within the next ten years about 50 new multi-purposeindoor arenas will be built. These are used for various events such as sports, concerts, etc. In order to achieve a high level of security in the case of danger alarm signals and alarmmessages must be heard well by the visitors. ÅF-Ingemansson wanted to show builders the importance of good speech perception and that it is not observed in arenas today. They conducted technical tests on two large multi purpose indoor arenas to develop parameters that affect speech perception in the arena.To get a subjective view of how these arenas are experienced a survey was created.

Syftet med studien var att skapa en bättre förståelse för hur några juniorishockeyspelare och deras tränare ser på hur faktorerna lagsammanhållning, spelaromsättning, roller och prestation förhåller sig till varandra och hur de arbetade med dessa faktorer. Instrumenten som användes var GEQ (Group Environment Questionnaire) och två helstrukturerade intervjuguider. Deltagarna i studien var ishockeyspelarna i ett J18-lag (n=18) och deras tränare (n=1) i en medelstor klubb i Sverige. Resultatet visade att samtliga intervjudeltagare upplevde ett positivt samband mellan lagsammanhållning, spelaromsättning, rollklarhet och prestation. Sambandet beskrevs dock som cirkulärt, att alla faktorerna var beroende av varandra och påverkades av varandra.

This report describes a Bachelor thesis work in which a robotised laser welding cell has been modelled and simulated for the purpose of making a presentation movie. The report shows that the work has been concentrated on making the movie from the modelling phase through the recording of the movie and ending up with the editing of the final presentation movie. A pre-study was made prior the Bachelor thesis work. In the pre-study a literature study was conducted about measurement and calibration of a welding cell. Measurement of almost all equipment in the entire cell was also conducted in the pre-study.

In the last couple of decades, corporate law firms have rapidly grown to become both influential and highly profitable corporations in the business world. Today, the largest law firms are assumed to bear far greater resemblance to large and often multinational public limited companies than the small businesses generally associated with legal services. However, one interesting specific set them apart from the majority of other companies; the partnership and its interrelated profit sharing. The aim of this study has therefore been to investigate partner compensation systems in corporate law firms and further examine what implications chosen compensation systems have on the organizations. Using a multiple case study, including 7 of Scandinavia?s largest and most well known law firms, the results show that partner compensation systems are highly individual and the critical question is whether to employ seniority based or performance based compensation systems.

The DuPont formula is one of the most well known and basic tools used for financial statement analysis and is highly useful for understanding firms strategies and operating environment. Previous studies on American listed companies have also shown that analysis of the changes in the DuPont components is useful in forecasting contexts. In this thesis we test whether disaggregating the change in return on net operating assets provides incremental information about future performance for Swedish listed and not listed companies. We find that the change in asset turnover is a leading indicator of increased profitability for both listed and private companies, regardless of size. We also find evidence that the usefulness of the disaggregation for understanding future performance is greater in capital intense industries and lesser in service industries..

The actual project presents the development of a testing rig for a steam engine. A short overviewabout the development of steam engines is presented, until arriving to the development of thepresent engine, which will require to be tested in different ways.The testing rig studied on this project (based on a Lanchester engine) will be used to testdifferent materials and layouts for the group Piston-Cylinder.The engine is a high performance steam power engine, which is going to have a highpower/dimensions ratio, what will lead to require high performance components and materials.An introduction to the testing rig is presented, and the entire design project is done in order toreplace the disappeared documentation of the current testing rig, built on the 1970?s. Also somemodifications done in the original testing rig are presented, as well as some detected problemsand their possible solutions..

Organizational learning has become more and more important in the last decades as the environment in which organizations exist continues to change rapidly and unexpectedly. In order for organizational learning to happen, the individuals within the organization must learn. Just as different individuals possess different skills, each individual also has their own learning style. As the use of teamwork increases, so does the need for techniques to put high performing teams together and with organizational learning as one of the objectives the question is, how do we maximize learning, efficiency and performance in teams? This study uses a quantitative method to examine how teams, from a course at the Stockholm School of Economics, perform on the individual learning, team efficiency and team performance scale based on the individual learning styles within the team.

Detta arbete inom prestationsmätning av effektiv logistik är utfört på Scanias produktionsenhet MB i Oskarshamn. Denna produktionsenhet tillverkar hytterna till Scanias lastbilar på europamarknaden, från plåtrulle till färdigmålad hyttkaross. Produktionsenheten MB består av en pressverkstad, en karossverkstad och ett måleri.Uppgiften i detta arbete är att utveckla ett antal mätetal för prestationsmätning av MB:s internlogistik, och utifrån dessa ge förslag på förbättringsmöjligheter i verksamheten.Uppgiften löses genom att använda Bourne och Neelys metoder för utveckling av mätetal, så som en framgångskarta för den kritiska framgångsfaktorn effektiv logistik och utformandet av ett definitionsblad, vilket explicit definierar varje mätetal. Detta tillsammans med Parmenters definitioner angående mätetal och arbetssätt vad det gäller prestationsmätning, avser att spegla moderna tillvägagångssätt för prestationsmätning och för implementering av dessa i ett företag.De mätetal som rekommenderas för implementering i MB:s logistiska verksamhet är trucktimmar per hytt, leveranspålitlighet, lageryta, energianvändning per hytt för transporter och materialhanteringskostnad per hytt. Flera förbättringsförslag rekommenderas också vad det gäller den förbättringspotential som finns vid införandet av en gemensam materialhanteringsfunktion på MB.

This paper presents a study that evaluates the performance of stock recommendations issued on Swedish stocks during 2003. The selection of recommendations in this paper originates from banks, major brokerage firms and financial press located in Sweden. The total of 171 recommendations consisted of 99 buy recommendations and 72 sell recommendations. Forecast revisions presented in this paper suggest that Investment managers have no ability to predict performance winners, nor do their forecasts in general have any significant impact on stock prices. A mere 50 percent of the recommendations in this revision had a weak ability to outperform their benchmark indexes as in other similar revisions.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate whether Suzanne Retzinger?s linguistic cues for shame and verbal behaviors for hiding shame could be used to measure shame in surveys based on Thomas Scheff?s theory of shame. I created a measurement instrument consisting of 30 statements, which were all meant to measure general shame.The instrument was administrated to 180 respondents studying at Karlstad University, of whom 4 respondents were removed from the data set due to lack of standardization. With the polytomous rasch model used for the analysis, data from 176 respondents were analyzed, of whom 124 respondents were female and 52 were male.The result showed that the measurement instrument?s statements should not be used together because the analysis indicated multidimensionality.

The student project Elba at KTH started in 2011 and is a project where a battery driven prototype car is developed. The vehicle competes in Eco Shell Marathon in Rotterdam, Holland. In this competition the vehicle that travels a certain distance including several starts and stops with the lowest energy consumption wins. To minimize the consumption is therefore very important, which requires knowledge of the vehicles energy losses.A vehicle's energy losses depends on several factors and can be divided into the powertrain efficiency and the driving resistance. The driving resistance can then be divided in to rolling and air resistance, if smaller losses like vibrations are ignored.

Catecholamines are stress hormones that are produced and released by a rare tumor called pheochromocytoma. This tumor can cause hypertension which if undiagnosed and untreated leads to death. Since good therapy is available, it is important to find the tumor in time. The most common way to diagnose the tumor is measurement of the biochemical markers; catecholamines and their metabolites, methylated catecholamines.After observation that almost all normetanephrine results for women were higher than the upper reference limit and therefore pathological, the accuracy of the present reference intervals was questioned. Therefore new reference intervals for both urinary catecholamines and methylated catecholamines were developed by analysis of 46 samples using HPLC.

An often encountered problem when implementing a mass flow regulator in a rolling mill is the one with measurement of speed. The most widely used solution is to fit a pulse counter to a wheel that is in contact with the strip. Common problems with this design are for instance scratch marks on the strip and problems with the flatness measuring system.  One way of circumventing the aforementioned problems would be a non-contact measuring system. The market of today only offers systems based on the Doppler principle.This report evaluates three different systems for non-contact speed measurement. Important areas in the evaluation have been the ability to operate under normal rolling conditions, integration in existing control system and how well the sensor can be fitted to the rolling mill.