For many years, there has been a housing shortage in Sweden. Many have been expecting a construction boom in the housing sector, but that has yet to arrive. With the current legislations and guidelines surrounding modern, energy efficient housing; production costs have increased dramatically in recent years. As a result, having a negative effect on housing production despite the high demand for homes.This exam work is carried out on a construction project of Sjötorpshus AB and its purpose is to evaluate how to optimise the construction process for the production of a new residential settlement, "Kv.Hunden", located in Katrineholm. In an interview with the company's MD, Pär Knutsson, four main issues were defined to focus on.

The surface finishing technique called black oxidation is currently being used on thetool holders made of low alloyed tool steel produced by Sandvik Coromant. Blackoxidation isn?t considered a sufficient technique because it doesn?t make the toolholders look like the quality products that they actually are. The reasoning behind thisis that the tool holders can show signs of corrosion after prolonged storing times orin countries with high humidity and temperature. The corrosion doesn?t decrease thetool holders performance, but the customers might believe otherwise.

Those who have invested in apartments, i.e. tenant-ownership, within the city centre of Stockholm have gained a higher than expected return on investment due to a buoyant real estate market. During the latest twelve-month period, the prices have risen more than 20 per cent in the city of Stockholm, resulting in an increased wealth together with a higher debt burden among investors. The aim of this thesis is to investigate which factors determine the prices from a micro perspective, and to what extent. An attempt is particularly made to estimate the degree of capitalization of the monthly fees; a factor which has turned out to be important according to other studies; but also to construct pricing models in order to set target prices for apartments.

On Nasdaq OMX Nordic Stockholm there has been a large increase in issues of preferred stocks since the financial crisis 2008. Aiming to explain whether preferred stocks have most of their characteristics relating to debt or equity, we answer four sub questions. Do all preferred stocks share the same features, or do they differ from each other? Our population is similar in characteristics, except for the preferred stock of Swedbank which is convertible and deviates when it comes to participation in dividends - instead of convertible the others are limited and redeemable. Further, the second sub question treats preferred stock in relation to the common stock quantitatively, in market data.

When the costs for a company increase it is normal to look for alternatives to lower thesecosts. One of the expenditure that farmers have is energy costs. The price for the energy mayvary because of the free market. To look at the possibilities for a farmer to invest in sunpower, to make the company less sensitive for the changes on the electrical market, isinteresting. The biggest part of the electricity that is produced in Sweden comes from a fewcompanies on the market.

This thesis was performed as assignment from Fazer Food Services. The aim was to survey which food additives that were present in the products in the quotation list of one of their suppliers to the Education and Nursing segment. The aim also was to perform a theoretical analysis of these food additives and to make recommendations which food additives are acceptable and which should be excluded from the products in the future. The recommendations are not published in this report, for more information Fazer Food Services can be contacted. Food additives which have already been approved are regarded as safe according to the safety evaluation methods available at the time of approval.

This thesis describes how a cost reduction project was done on the Packsize ondemand packing machine EM7. The cost reduction was achieved by making minorredesigns of the EM7.The project began by studying the EM7´s structure and function by working on itsassembly line. A short literature study on the subject Design for Manufacturing wasalso done.By working on the assembly line and by speaking with staff from production anddevelopment departments, a number of ideas for reducing manufacturing costs arose.Estimations of the potential cost reduction size for each proposal were done incollaboration with vendors and the purchasing department. Based on the size of the cost reduction, technical risk, impact on the assembly lineand the development time the various proposals were ranked. The two highestranked proposals were selected for further development towards finished solutions.One of the ideas that were selected to develop in to a finished solution meant thatsome of the pneumatic valves were replaced with others.

Infringement of intellectual property rights often causes significant economic damage. The problem with illegal activity concerning counterfeiting is constantly increasing. The development has lead to constitute an extensive international activity which is harmful for intellectual propery owners, consumers and the society in general. Competing products tend to be increasingly similar to each other, with rather similar marketing-, sales-, and pricingstrategies. As a result, the trademark strongly affects consumers? selection-process during purchase.

Silviculture in young stands in Sweden is below the mark concerning what has to be done in the forest, and it is time to solve the problem. The problem will not be solved only by the private forest owners, professional help is needed. Skogsägarna Mellanskog is one of four forest unions in Sweden who wants to play a role and take responsibility for forestry in the middle of Sweden. This academic essay is based on a market survey sent to 350 forest owners in the Örebro district. 186 of them answered the questions, giving a response frequence of 53 percentage. The purpose of the essay is to find the determining factors which will make a forest owner to find a collaborator when planning and carrying out the silviculture measures in young stands. The result of the survey shows that the forest owners are anxious about the price and the costs. The costs have a severe effect if the silviculture measures in young stands will be carried out or not.

The world?s consumption is increasing at an accelerating rate and it´s produced and consumed more goods and services than ever before. A large part of people's consumption consists of clothing that is bought and discarded increasingly leading to a number of environmental problems such as global warming, pollution, loss of biodiversity and the depletion of natural assets. One way to save the earth's resources is to buy used clothing, so called second hand, instead of new ones. The store chain ?The Ants? (in Swedish ?Myrorna?) has specializing in second-hand goods and sells, among other things, clothes.

This thesis project has focused on studying ÅF?s business concept Energy Collaboration, which is their way of selling energy efficiency services. Thereforeongoing projects have been analyzed. The purpose was to determine achieved energy efficiency, costs and profitability for the studied projects. It was concluded that the Energy Collaboration is a good way of selling energy efficiency services, since the customer takes no risk and energy savings of about 15-25 % can be achieved with simple measures.

The background of this study is an article in the hunting magazine ?Svensk Jakt? where Karl Hedin claims that his sawmills has not noticed any significant moose damages in the timber. The purpose with the study is to find out the causes to the moose explosion and what it has led to in today?s forests. A questionnaire has been sent out to sawmills in the region Dalarna with the purpose of finding out if sawmills receive moose-damaged timber and what they think about how they foresee future development. There were two causes of the moose explosion, that had effects on the moose population. The first cause was that the moose hunters wanted to raise the moose population, and by raising the calf shooting and by saving the cows they succeeded. The second cause was changing methods in Swedish forestry.

This Master Thesis is a product development project that has been carried out in cooperation withSvea Teknik AB. The company has developed an apparatus for attachment of a keel to a hull base ofa boat. The purpose for this thesis has been to compare a new concept of keel attachment incomposite material to thetraditionaldesign solution. This new keel attachment minimizes thedamages that may arise on the keel and the hull of the boat in shape of stresses impacts at grounding.Today it is a problem, relating to keel attachment on sailing boats having a fin keel or a bulbous keel.The manufacture focus on developing larger draught and shorter keel blades. The overall purpose isto increase performance of the sailing boat.The task for this thesis was to develop a concept of keel blade in composite material and investigateattachment to a sheet-shaped element.

The business world has been through an extreme transformation over the past decades, which have forced companies to look at themselves from a new point of view. Consumers have a complete new set of ways to gather information and are more motivated than ever to make sustainable consumption choices. This change of attitudes among consumers has made companies focus on other things than price versus quality. A whole new concept has been brought up to questioning: environmentalism. Consumers demand more organically produced products.

This paper aims to analyze the effect of the American Subprime crisis of 2007 through the perspective ofHaynes Minsky?s model according to Charles Kindleberger. The investigation revolves how the anatomyof a financial crisis develops and how it is applicable to the Subprime crisis. More specific conclusionsare derived from applying Minsky?s model to the three largest American indices; Dow Jones industrialaverage, S&P500 and NASDAQ.To deepen the analysis the Case-Shiller home price indices acts as a second parameter tocompliment Minsky?s perspective with Robert J.