AbstractThis master thesis was performed at Scania transmission department in Södertälje, where the manufacturing of gears is done. Today a large amount of manual handling is performed between the machining and the hardening process. Most of the manual handling is done at the heat treatment department. The purpose of this master thesis is to give a suggestion on how to reduce or eliminate the manual handling at the heat treatment department. The possibility to use the same packaging throughout the processes will also be investigated.

Algal bloom is a naturally occurring phenomenon and occurs in all waters around the world but in recent years, algal bloom in the Baltic Sea has become more massive and more widely spread. When an algal bloom negative effects on the seawater quality, it may have an impact on tourism in the Baltic Sea. The aim of this thesis is to study, through a survey based on a production function approach, whether an environmental change as algal blooms, influenced the Gotland tourist accommodation industry and their "production of attractive overnight? in the summer of 2005. The results show that algal blooms did not have a great impact on companies ?production of attractive accommodations".

Background: Risk Management plays an important part of the enterprises strategic business activity. Efficient Risk Management will secure the businesses survival, assets and creates market advantages. The interest of information security has consequently gained in Swedish corporations. Corporations have realized the importance of the information which is stored in the IT systems. IT is the tool for businesses future progress and growth and therefore a source of risks.

Volvo Penta has been producing boat engines since 1907 and are world leading in this seg­ment. They have today an extended range and also sell industrial power stations. Quality, safe­ty and environmental care are three core values for Volvo and together they strive to give their customers the right product with the right quality.Volvo has developed a production system named Volvo Production System, VPS, and one of the pillars is continuous improvements. Within this pillar you can find value stream map­ping, which is used to analyze the value stream through the process. This tool gives a wide perspective and helps to keep focus on the entire process instead of just parts of it.Volvo Penta in Vara has earlier done value stream mapping but without good results since they didn?t take set-up times and imbalances in account.

Because of the increasing trends in energy consumption and increased environmental awareness, greater focus has been placed on improvement and development of renewable energy sources. An already proven and accepted method is biogas production from anaerobic digestion at municipal wastewater treatment plants.In the waste water treatment process solid material and dissolved pollutants are separated from the water, forming a sludge. The sludge is separated from the process and stabilized during anaerobic digestion or aerobic aeration. Most often, mesophilic anaerobic digestion is used. Because of degradation by microorganisms, biogas with a high content of methane is formed during the digestion.

This thesis examines the ways in which adaptation and vulnerability are framed in national and sectorial policy-documents dealing with expected societal impacts of climate change. By using theories of discourse and ideology, the analysis aims to find and understand important ideas and presuppositions that are explicitly or implicitly expressed in these documents in order to make possible and tangible the institutional production of policy within the potentially far-reaching problematique of climate change adaptation and vulnerability. The analysis shows that there are two main perspectives through which vulnerability and adaptation are framed; one focusing limits to societal robustness; and one contesting the institutional capacity to implement adaptations. The author understands these framings as complementarily optimizing preconceived social and economic relations, something that might, in fact, reduce the response capacity of people..

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how three banks country funds are performing relative to each other in regard to risk and return. And to find out if there is any underlying factor that may have affected the stock exchange in the different countries.Methodology: The study is based on secondary data and will apply the quantitative method, based on a deductive approach. The sample consists of three major Swedish banks and from them we have selected three country funds. The calculation formulas that have been applied are: Sharpe ratio, standard deviation and Arithmetic Average.Conclusion: The Writers concluded that Sweden funds had the highest yield to lowest risk in both periods in all three major banks. We have also concluded that the underlying factors affecting a country fund.

This paper investigates the compensation for risk in the context of the Swedish stock market with a special focus on downside risk. Using daily market data collected from the A-list of the Stockholm Stock Exchange between the years 1983 and 2005 the purpose is to answer the question whether Swedish investors are compensated for holding stocks with high downside risk, measured as downside beta. Using panel data analysis it is shown, in accordance with most previous evidence in international research, firstly that stocks with high beta values on average experience higher returns than stocks with low beta values, and secondly that stocks with high downside beta values experience higher returns than stocks with high beta values in general. On the other hand, cross-sectional regression methodology using a bivariate regression approach shows that downside beta does not explain excess returns very well. Instead, regression analysis suggest that high upside beta does a much better job in explaining excess return over this time period compared to downside beta.

Aim: The aim of this study is to do a comparative study between Swedish Ethical equity Funds with Swedish traditional equity funds in terms of return, risk and risk-adjusted return.Theory: Sharpe ratio and Modigliani-Modigliani.Method: The essay will be based on a quantitative research method in which secondary data is the basis for the calculations. A statistical analysis was applied.Conclusion: The study concludes that there is no significant difference between the ethical fund group and the traditional fund group in terms of return, risk and risk-adjusted returns. The traditional fund group was those who had the best returns but only by small margins..

This report is a study made at Pallco AB. Pallco is a subcontractor that is specialized on steel and aluminium components.The aim of the report is to show an improvement proposal that leads to a reduction of the storage and improve the flow through the production of one item that is a part of a product that Pallco manufactures.With the increasing competition from other countries who can manufacture with lower costs must Swedish companies try to make theirs manufacturing as efficient as possible and remove all waste. By using the tools of Lean Production it is possible to reduce the costs and increase the efficiency.The method we used is value stream mapping. A map of the present condition has been made and then different improvement proposal were discussed. A map of a future condition has also been designed..

This study has investigated the possibilities of implementing lean in a division of a hospital in Stockholm. The goal was to reduce the lead time for the patient to get his diagnose by implementing lean in the two production flows of this division. In order to accomplish it, a complete map over the value stream has been done. With the help of the value stream map and lean theory a list over the processes in contradiction with lean has been made. Finally propositions to implement lean and by this way reduce the lead times in this stream have been made out.

Ungdomar lever inom en social kontext vilken direkt samt indirekt påverkar deras ställningstaganden gentemot cannabis. För att motverka att bruket ska öka i framtiden bör man se över vilka risk- samt skyddsfaktorer som påverkar deras attityder samt bruk av drogen. Idag råder en oro över att legaliseringsdebatten runt om i världen kan resultera i en negativ följd i form av allt mer liberala attityder bland den yngre generationen. Syftet med denna studie är därav att undersöka relationen mellan ungdomars attityder, eventuella bruk och de risk- samt skyddsfaktorer vilka finns i deras sociala omvärld. Resultatet från föreliggande studie visar att ungdomarna i den berörda kommunen har en restriktiv inställning gentemot cannabis dock visas en liberalare attityd bland de som testat substansen.

The environmental assessment system Miljöbyggnad is a Swedish system initiated by Bygga-Bo-Dialogen to assess buildings with regards to three main areas; ?Energy?, ?Indoor climate? and ?Materials?. A building can obtain three different classifications depending on how well it manages to meet the demands. GOLD is the highest classification and is followed by SILVER and BRONZE. The majority of the measures needed to comply with the demands are done during the design phase.

The Swedish building contractor JMRegion Öst would like to to investigatethe possibilities of developing andstreamlining the production of singlefamilyhouses. JM are producing singlefamilyhouses with prefabricated framesat a rate of about two houses per week.During construction, the different tasksare performed by JM?s own productionstaff but also by varioussubcontractors.When examining the schedules of recentlyproduced projects, it appears that allthe houses are more or less completedeight weeks before the customer moves into the house. During those eight weeksseveral operations are conducted such asinspections, installation of appliancesand cleaning procedures. The inspectionperiod constitutes between 25 and 35% ofthe complete construction period.By conducting interviews, it has beendiscovered that this final phase is anessential security buffer for delays anderrors that often occur.

The agricultural sector is characterized by larger crop farms and more extensive livestockproduction. The efficiency improvement is partly a result from a stronger competition in theglobal market. The agricultural products need to be produced at a lower cost than competitorsin order to survive as a farmer. The solution is larger firms that benefit from economies ofscale. This brings large investments that create a greater need for leverage and closer relationto the credit agency.