The structure and performance of grocery distribution in Sweden has changed profoundly since the second world war. Increasing access and usage of the private car, in combination with an accommodating town planning has enhanced the exploitation of scale economies within distribution firms. There is, however, some ambiguity concerning the overall efficiency of the distribution system when the costs associated with travelling and purchasing performed by households are treated as an integrated part of the total distribution cost function. The purpose of this master thesis is to develop the foundation of a spatial optimisation model, which defines the most efficient distribution system. The underlying idea is that the optimal localisation and size of grocery stores is a function of economies of scale within the firms weighed against distributions costs within the households, such as transportation costs.

Physical rehabilitation is a constantly growing field in veterinary nursing. To build a physical rehabilitation center for dogs you need personnel with adequate education and knowledge. In spite of good knowledge it can be hard to know which areas and equipment necessary for the work. It is of interest to describe how a physical rehabilitation center can be planned and which spaces and equipment to prioritize. In this study, data of different spaces and equipment for a physical rehabilitation center for dogs are presented and also the economical perspective is introduced as a background.

The background of this study is the fact that it nowadays is more common to grow wheat after wheat. Usually we plow every autumn to remove the straw, and we wanted to study the effect of alternative methods to do it. We have done this experiment to answer the question if no tillage is better than conventional plowing. The results of the field experiment indicate that there is a link between plant establishment and the choice of equipment, but also a higher weed pressure in experimental plots with only ground tillage. The equipments which left much straw on the top of the ground the problems with fungi were more severe.

The debate about questions concerning corporate governance has intensified in Sweden the last decade. From July 1th 2008, the Swedish Code for Corporate Governance was extended to comprise all Swedish companies listed on the OMX Nordic Exchange Stockholm. Our aim with this master thesis is to examine the effect of the Revised Code on Swedish corporate governance and in particular its contribution to creating value or costs. We do this through a qualitative study of 22 interviews with representatives for different interests. With our study, we have found that the Revised Code in several areas has had considerable influence on Swedish corporate governance.

The everyday work at a staffing agency and how its leaders deal with the problems that appears: A case study at Maxkompetens.The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how leaders at a staffing company deal with the everyday problems that arise from a geographically dispersed workforce.The staffing industry has grown by 30-40 percent annually and has over the past 15 years been the fastest growing industry in Sweden. This shows that the interest and demand for the staffing industry and its activities are now rising at an increasingly faster pace. This is an industry that is operating under specific conditions and with a geographically dispersed workforce. This will make the leaders of a staffing company to an important link between the staffing leaders and the staffing personnel.The relationship between the staffing company's leaders and its personnel is important, but not completely trouble free. Difficulties arise in that the employees may be located in different places and at various client companies with the result that the leaders of the staffing company cannot have a daily personal contact with their geographically dispersed personnel.We have used a qualitative approach on our paper and our empirical methodology has been a case study with ethnography and interviews.

I intend to examine how teachers interpret the purpose of preschools and the national curriculum and how they handle any problems rising due to the fact that the curriculum is just an instructional document and freely interpreted. Personnel working within the school system have different opinions on how to maintain a functional educational activity. How do they interpret the national curriculum and why? Are there any similarities or differences between different teacher?s views and is it possible to approach this in a constructive way? Is it really possible that personnel working at Swedish preschools are unaware of their purpose or is there another explanation?In this study I have worked according to the qualitative method and have been conducting interviews with the possibility to open follow-up questions with room for interpretation. A total of six people on four different preschools have been interviewed and their answers have been analyzed as a whole.The result from these six interviews shows that there are both differences and similarities in their interpretations of the purpose of the Swedish preschool.

The everyday work at a staffing agency and how its leaders deal with the problems that appears: A case study at Maxkompetens.The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how leaders at a staffing company deal with the everyday problems that arise from a geographically dispersed workforce.The staffing industry has grown by 30-40 percent annually and has over the past 15 years been the fastest growing industry in Sweden. This shows that the interest and demand for the staffing industry and its activities are now rising at an increasingly faster pace. This is an industry that is operating under specific conditions and with a geographically dispersed workforce. This will make the leaders of a staffing company to an important link between the staffing leaders and the staffing personnel.The relationship between the staffing company's leaders and its personnel is important, but not completely trouble free. Difficulties arise in that the employees may be located in different places and at various client companies with the result that the leaders of the staffing company cannot have a daily personal contact with their geographically dispersed personnel.We have used a qualitative approach on our paper and our empirical methodology has been a case study with ethnography and interviews.

During the 1970?s the interest for quality management and the concept of quality costs increased considerably. Business leaders noticed that there was a great potential for reducing costs of poor quality. Since up to 10-30% of a company?s total turnover may consist of poor quality costs some consider them as an unexploited goldmine.

The purpose of this study was to examine how school personnel describe and interpret the phenomenon bullying among girls, and also what their interpretations are based upon. More specifically its aim was to find out what characterizes and causes girl-to-girl bullying, according to school welfare officers and teachers. We wanted to find out how school personnel look upon aggression among girls and social expectations on girls behavior. The analysis was based on two kinds of perspectives: one focusing on gender and one focusing on power in relationships. Research shows that girl-to-girl bullying is hard to observe and that this problem has been invisible in earlier studies.

The construction industry has been heavily criticized in the past few years for its development of productivity compared to the manufacturing industry. In 2009 the Social Care Center developed a report that treated och criticized different errors within the construction industry. For instance competence, construction errors and performance had showned bad results which had to be improved. A common sentence within the building industry is that ?every project is unique?. Today it?s common for a construction company to have costs for material and services which exceeds two-thirds of the total cost.

This degree project is based on identifying and allocation of costs in a packaging section at Electrolux Distriparts in Torsvik.The purpose of this thesis is to identify the costs that emerge when packaging different articles and show how the costs are allocated. The report also contains improvement suggestions about how the company can use the current computer system more efficient.The methods that have been used in order to approach the problem and the collection of information have mainly been literature study, interviews and observation.The work started with answering the questions; which expenditure cost and direct cost exist in the section, how can they be allocated, if improvement can be done and how the flow of information is supposed to happen.In order to answer the questions we used our former experience and the knowledge we achieved by reading literature, interview relevant persons in the company and observations carried out in the section.Through our studies, we came up with an Excel file, which is the groundwork for a template that can be used by the company in different occasions depending on the situation and need. It is important to remember to modify the template if the presumptions change. In the template, we have identified the different kind of costs that emerge when packaging different articles and we have also allocated the costs. In addition formulas and estimations that are necessary for the cost calculation are presented.The work consisted in making the groundwork for a template.

The average length of life is increasing in the western world, hence the older population is growing. A common health problem among the elderly is malnutrition. Malnutrition causes decreased body strength and is associated with an amplified risk of infections, depression, fractures and increased mortality. The health care system is therefore faced with the challenge to prevent malnutrition among the growing population of elderly. This could be done by providing nutritious foods developed to meet the specific needs of elderly. The overall objective of this project was to test a healthy energy dense drink based on oats targeted for the elderly consumers as a strategy to prevent malnutrition among elderly.

Introduction: Bokföringsnämnden started the K-project in 2004. The purpose was to collect rules and standards for different categories of companies in a complete set of regulations. Small businesses were given the option to choose between K3 which is the main regulatory and K2 which is a simplified regulatory framework. One specific difference between the regulations is that companies may not capitalize development costs if the company applies K2, this may causes problems for the companies that can give rise to such costs.Purpose: The purpose is to explain the problems that companies have identified in the choice of regulatory frameworks and the implications that may follow the specific rule in K2 on the company's activities and financial report.Frame of reference: K3 contains definitions and requirements that must be met so development costs can be capitalized in a company. Information presented in the financial statements should be relevant to the reader.

This is a work that look at the factors that affect future monthly costs when buying a house in Sweden and which options are the most financially favorable over a 30 year period. The work also examines whether it is economically beneficial to invest in a low-energy house regardless of geographic location in Sweden, and discuss about whether a calculation template can help individuals to choose more environmentally friendly options. The work has been limited so that a certain number of predetermined factors and its measurable values have been developed with the help of a literature study. The factors chosen are building type, climate, heating systems, loan interest rates, energy prices, energy price increases, inflation rates and down payment. These are then combined into 72 different calculation cases which get put in a calculation model made in excel.

Lean Production is used by many manufacturing companies. Companies in process industries do not use Lean Production to the same extent today. This is part of the report's issue to explore how Lean Production can be applied to a company in the process industries.The investigated company is a processing company that manufactures various types of foil. The company wishes to streamline its production and has therefore asked the authors to examine if Lean Production can offer the company improvements in their production. Lean Production value stream mapping tool has been selected to identify and analyze the current state of two of its products in production.