Performance appraisals- a study of the performance appraisals significance as a tool for development in the public sector.Anders Larsson and Åsalill OlssonPerformance appraisals have been given a central role in leading businesses in the public sector and are seen as a tool to create development opportunities and achieve better results. This has resulted that performance appraisal in many organizations takes up capacity and time. This was the starting point of our interest to study whether the time spent on performance appraisals effectively pays for itself in the organization, in other words whether the effects expected actually are achieved. The paper examines first line managers` views on staff appraisal purposes and effects of a function within the Landstinget. The survey design, methodology and transaction are of qualitative and quantitative method with three different sources: literature review of previous research, interviews with first line managers in Landstinget Västmanland and the results from an employee satisfaction survey conducted on behalf of Landstinget Västmanland.

Lao People?s Democratic Republic (PDR) is a country where the majority of the population works within the sector agriculture in one way or another. The number of goats are increasing and the animals can be an important income source for families. However, during the dry season, lack of feed is a great problem for the farmers. Fodder trees have shown great potential as dry season feeding, due to that the trees often hold green and fresh leaves a long time into the season, compared to grass that dry out quickly.

The main goal with the master thesis has been to do a status evaluation of the chain machinery with its start chain and wire to secure the production on a short basis due to that a reconstruction is not planned at this time. An evaluation of the condition of the start chain and the rollers in the chain depository has been done. An offer has been requested for a new start chain and the evaluation of the start chains may be a basis for the decision taking. The production has been able to go on, although it has arisen some problems which have been difficult to find the causes for. There is no gathered ?picture? of the machinery status and a mapping of each machinery has been compiled of comprehensive logs.

Reporting harvested and forwarded volumes are important for the forest industry as it provides information of the size of the stock and facilitates logistics. Figures from Holmen Skog show low reporting frequency. The purpose of this study is to investigate the reason and find suggestions for improvement. A total of 17 machine operators were interviewed using a questionnaire combined with open questions. The results show that the majority of the machine operators find it simple to use the reporting system, although, some of them reports that it doesn?t always work as supposed to.

Due to the technical development the enterprises of today are forced to creative thinking when it comes to marketing of their products. An example of one of these new methods are the development of product placement which has come to an interesting turn namely advertiser funded programming (AFP). Instead of the product just being a small part of the storyline it has become the story itself. The purpose of this study is to analyse how the advertiser funded tv-production Roomservice, a Swedish home styling program, communicates with it?s viewers as well as how they perceive the message.

The release of green house gases and the environmental impacts humans have on the environment are huge and might cause irreversible changes to our earth. Meat is considered to have large impacts on the environment, especially beef meat and therefore there have lately been considerable discussions on the sustainable level of meat consumption and production. The main goal with this thesis is to study sustainable meat production and meat consumption in the county of Dalarna in Sweden. Indicators for sustainable meat production and meat consumption were developed and applied on three cases. Interviews were carried out with a municipality in the region that represents the consumer and three beef farmers that represents the producers.

AbstractPurpose ? The purpose of this study is to investigate possible reasons for long lead-time in a customer driven production, and how the lead-time can be reduced. To fulfil the purpose the study has been broken down into two questions.1. Whichfactorsaffectthelead-timeinacustomer-drivenproduction?2.

In a time when milk producing farm businesses face decline in profitability it is of great importance to examine how the situation can be improved. This thesis is a study off efficiency in milk producing farm businesses represented by Swedish, Dutch and German farms. The aim of this study is to investigate whether any differences exist between companies in these countries. Moreover, the study includes a mapping of a number of factors that determine how efficient milk production can be managed. This mapping is based on a literature review on prior efficiency studies followed by qualitative interviews with milk production advisors as well as a questionnaire sent out to dairy farmers in Sweden.

Syfte: Syftet med studien är att belysa forskning och litteratur kring Lean Production utifrån två vetenskapliga synsätt. Studien syftar även till att undersöka en organisations införande av och arbete med Lean Production, för att kunna ge praktiska bidrag om hur detta arbete kan fortskrida.Metod: Studien har genomförts med en kvalitativ och öppen ansats inom ramen för en fallstudie i samarbete med Sandvik Materials Technology. Empiriskt material har samlats in genom intervjuer och observationer med och av operatörer, produktionsledning och stabspersonal. En omfattande analys av litteratur och forskning kring Lean Production har legat till grund för en teoretisk referensram.Resultat & slutsats: Belysningen av Lean Production visar att systemsynsättet beskriver konceptet som ett säkert recept för framgång, trots sin förenklade syn på organisationers påverkan av omvärldsförändringar. Det socialkonstruktivistiska synsättet visar att Lean Production har en legitimerande funktion i organisationer, men ger liten kunskap om de förändringar som sker i organisationer.

The aim of this report is to analyse the use of the capacity at the CNC (computer numerical control) cutters and show how the level of set up time for these cutters at Stålöv AB. This assignment is concrete whereas there are no subjective questions to this matter and there are only cold figures presented.Production economy is getting more important as the competition hardens and there are several different ways to increase productivity and efficiency in a company. In order to increase productivity and efficiency work studies are used to, through an analysis, find developments in methods that result in improved work methods and to establish the time that are used. Increased production of different parts and customer driven production in combination with increased demands on rationalisation of capital have led to an enlarged interest for shorter set up times in the production.To point out the use of capacity and the set up time of the cutters at Stålöv AB we used frequency studies. Frequency studies are work measure methods based on random observations on predetermined events to calculate the relative occurrence of these events.

Our project is divided into two parts, one production and written report. The main focus was the production part, were we used PHP to create simple solution for handling SMS and MMS with direct communication with the mobile operator server. We communicate with sockets and can handle CIMD2 and MM7 protocol. To get our components easy to use we have created two classes to handle SMS and MMS. To demonstrate our technical platform we created a website were you can create an account.

Soybean meal from South America is the most common protein feed used for animal production in Sweden. Production of soybean has negative effects on the environment and the transports from South America to Sweden causes considerable CO2 emissions. Therefore it is a growing interest in locally produced protein feed in Sweden. Protein feeds that are possible to grow in Sweden are rapeseed, peas, faba beans and lupins. Those are adapted to the Nordic climate and are perfect to grow in cereal rotations.

Beef production in Sweden has traditionally been about rearing of dairy calves to slaughter. With reduced number of dairy cows and accordingly less dairy calves for slaughter, there has been a need for new forms of beef production in Sweden. In Västerbotten there are good conditions for beef production with a high feeding level of roughage due to favourable climate. The aim of this thesis is to, through interviews with ten farmers with beef production in Västerbotten, study what and with how much they feed their animals and link the results to production level. The thesis begins with a literature review where the general feeding standards and feeding recommendations for beef cows and growing cattle are examined.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the reasons a religious minority leader has to convert to a larger religious group and how the leader chooses to communicate this event in certain daily press. In March 2014 the leader and founder of the Christian and charismatic movement ?Livets Ord? (Words of Life), Ulf Ekman, announced his decision converting to the Roman Catholic Church after a 10 year long process of thinking. The communications of Ekman?s linguistic language in the articles are discussed through two discourse analyzing perspective, Laclau & Mouffe?s and Fairclough?s.

Swedish agricultural businesses are facing challenges in order to achieve long-term profitability. The opportunity to improve profitability and efficiency on farm level may be enhanced by management. One way to work with leadership is to use Lean. It is a management system that aims to improve competitiveness. Currently, there is a project where Lean is implemented into 100 agricultural firms.