This thesis looks at two sides of the same coin: how to support the production and future development at a specialist medical technology department at Danderyd Hospital. The two sides are; a pilot study of a product management system (PDM) and an interview based study on the characteristics of the silent knowledge of the technicians. The department (National respiratory centre, NRC) is facing retirement of several key employees.The technical study shows that the success of an implementation is largely dependent on the users? prior knowledge and use of a 3D Computer aided design system (CAD).The system itself is shown to fulfill the Lifecycle requirement of tracking the products (mostly tracheostomy tubes) but without a CAD centered workflow, some substantial education and preferably some new recruits, an implementation of the PDM system will fail. The author recommends development of the current ?low-tech? system of MS Excel and Access rather than redistribute the dependency from technician towards a complex, commercial software and its vendor.The analysis of the technicians? silent knowledge with the newly developed method, epithet for silent knowledge (ETK), shows that the longer employment time:the more differentiated technicians become in describing their work,practical knowledge are regarded higher andthe social and collective problem solving factors of the work becomes more important.Typically, it is shown that a new employee should preferably enjoy problem solving, being pragmatic and social as well as having some prior education or work experience in a CAD and/or a PDM system..

Service Design is a relatively new, unexplored and exciting phenomenon that through an interdisciplinary work methodology designs services. A discussion has been going on for a long time regarding whether there is a difference between products and services. Services are often classified as immaterial, heterogeneous, non-storable and inseparable in relation to products. A question that arises is if something specific characterises the work methodology used regarding service design. The aim with this paper is thus to explain the work methodology when working with service design.

This study is about how a swedish brand within the food industry that experiences a crisis following a product failure. It focuses on three areas following the crisis and these are crisis management, recovery strategies and brand management. This study seeks to explain how these areas interact in relation to massive exposure to mass media and how they interact restore the brand's potential loss of reputation. This study was conducted as a case study with a deductive and qualitative approach. The data gathered to this study was mainly based on newspaper articles and complemented with semi-structured interviews with twelve local retailers of the brand..

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is a genre of computerized systems which allows system development corporations to efficiently and more easily manage, maintain and handle the applications lifecycle. These ALM systems have a wide variety of tools which can be integrated to enable and support collaborative work, while they act at the core of the organisation. Todays ALM systems support flexible system development methods throughout the entire development process. This paper focuses on a case-study of a Swedish business- and technology corporation and their use of two ALM systems with an aim to unravel the differences between these systems and their functionality to serve as a basis for decision making regarding their utilization of best practice with their ALM-Systems. Meanwhile we studied their approach to ALM systems to see if they were using them according to the initial idea of ALM systems.

PURPOSE: To investigate to what extent product brand positioning models can be used to analyzecorporate brand positioning;METHODOLOGY: The phenomenon is observed from a positivist epistemological position within a primarilyinductive research design. The research strategy is defined as qualitative, while the method of ethnographiccontent analysis is implemented to analyze primary data;THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE: Product and brand positioning literature; Product brand positioning rhombus;EMPIRICAL DATA: Ethnographic content analysis of brand commercials;CONCLUSION: As shown by the extensive literature review product brands (PB) and corporate brands (CB) coexistin corporate environments. One of key insights of this study shows that product brand positioning(PBP) and corporate brand positioning (CBP) processes can also co-exist in the same corporate environment.Moreover, PBs can be built based on the CB, making the investment in CB a long term return on investment.The study also observes that PBP messages include the ?against whom? attribute, highlighting differentiationin the competitive environment; when on the corporate level, this evolves, and in some cases becomes quitethe contrary, when the concept of ?from whom? or ?by whom? is stressed more than the differentiation amongother CBs in the competitive environment. This stresses the importance of including brand identity elementsin CBP..

It has in a broader extent become important for companies and other organizations with large organizations to have a properly functioning web platform where content management is an essential part. Polopoly is a web content management system developed in Sweden, used by several European corporations but foremost Scandinavian such working in different media related business areas.Our aim has been to analyze this tool and render a report which hopefully will assist the initiator of our thesis; a consulting enterprise called Qurius, in their negotiations with future customers, when to suggest Polopoly as a suitable content management solution.By using case studies at companies currently using Polopoly, our goal is to define which characteristic makes the product a competitive publishing tool. To put our analysis in perspective, we will compare the most important aspects of Polopoly with a similar product.According to the results of our investigation we consider Polopoly being a beneficial choice with regard to a number of important parameters. Finally we have summarized these properties in a list of examples explaining in which cases Polopoly is a preferable alternative as a web based content management platform..

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe small businesses? opinions about the auditor as a business adviser as well as their need for advice, dependent on which stage of the lifecycle model they belong to. This dissertation has a qualitative approach as the authors wanted to gain a deeper understanding about the problem area. As the lifecycle model in this dissertation consist of three stages, the authors have interviewed six small businesses, two in each stage. The interviews were conducted with the owner and took place at the location of the business.

Product development is essential for all companies that want to survive in competitive markets regardless of the characteristics of the product that the company sells. Companies that sell products within product categories which can be seen as bad, also need to develop their products in order to remain competitive. If these bad products add a positive attribute, for example that they get organic, a contradiction within the product arises and they get incongruent. This thesis investigates which effects that follow a launch of an incongruent product. The thesis also examines if these effects are affected by the strength of the brand under which the product is launched.A total of 240 respondents participated in an experimental study where product incongruity was manipulated for two different product categories, where one well known brand and one unknown brand were examined in each category.

The purpose of current paper is to identify the differences (ifany) between Swedish and Turkish consumers in terms ofproduct design perception and to identify the differences toproduct design in relating the four dimensions / characteristics:1.Aesthetical attractiveness, 2.Functionality, 3.Value and4.Quality.The findings of the study indicate the existence of a universal perception of design. Despite the culturally different countries that are examined the empirical material consistently display similarities between the two countries. Both the quantitative and qualitative data point to a very similar perception in terms of design. The possibilities of global design are discussed for companies as well as managerial implications and future research..

User friendly and usable are two words that are often mentioned in the context of marketing new products. By doing so it adds an extra sense of quality to the product. The meaning of these words is therefore something that every product wants. But what is it that makes a product usable and user friendly? What methodology exists formaking sure that a product is usable? Does it exist applicable processes to ensure user centered development? These questions together with a practical example are parts of what will be addressed in this report.The thesis was carried out for C2 Management, a company that works with supporting other companies in their work with quality and constant improvements.

This study investigates whether creative online product exposure within the clothing industry has a positive effect on the behaviour and attitude of today's consumers. Product exposure is the most important stimulus in the online marketing universe, yet few studies exist on this topic. Thus, this study pioneers in this specific research field. Through empirical analysis this study reveals that product exposure has a significant and direct effect on the perceived corporate ability and consumer involvement. Moreover creative product exposure indirectly increases the perceived product quality, intention to buy and the overall attitude towards the brand.

Background: Mass customization has been identified as a competitive business strategy by both companies and academics because of its ability to incorporate the voice of the customer into companies? products and services. Although mass customization may sound appealing, the strategic concept is still developing and firms adopting this business strategy face several challenges. Production concerns are of high relevance since mass customization implies a high level of customer involvement in the product design. Since the areas are closely linked it is reasonable to ask how a mass customization strategy affects production concerns.

Most people have been forced to throw away a pot-plant after its death. There are many reasons to the death of a plant, but mainly it?s because its owner forgets it, and therefore fails to water it. The purpose of this project is therefore to develop a product which can prevent this from happening, while the product has to have a low manufacturing cost to be able to compete whit other, similar, products on the market. During the project, a benchmarking has been done to give a clear picture of what the product has to compete with. The directives there are for CE-marking, and which of these who concerns the product has also been looked up.

This paper examines the impact of conscious shelf management on online grocery stores. An S-O-R framework is used to unveil if some established shelf management techniques from physical stores are applicable in an online context. We also explain some of the cognitive processes customers experience as they get exposed to online buying situations. A main study with two data sources is conducted: one quantitative website experiment with 168 participants who got exposed to five different organisation patterns within five different categories; and one more qualitative eye tracking experiment with 20 participants. The results indicate that a disorganised product page evokes not only different scan paths and cognitive patterns but also generates higher sales.

The project this report is handling has been implemented on NBB, Nordisk Bilbelysning AB in Linköping. The company produces and develops lightning and searchlights for all types of vehicles. Lately NBB´s supplier of electronics, OSRAM, has developed a mercuryfree xenon lightsource. Mercury is one of the most hazardous environmental waste and to get rid of the mercury entirely in the lightsource is a big step that means alot for the environment.This lightsource will be placed in one of NBB´s worksearchlights called My, and will be sold as an alternative to mercurycontaining searchlights. NBB wants to put an environmental label on this product and they want to have essential information about the product that is needed for the production.