The aims of the practical work carried out for this thesis were to redesign a clinical decision support system for thoracic surgeons, called AssistMe, and to evaluate the concept behind this system. The main objective of the thesis is to give an account of the considerations that were found to be of key importance for designing a clinical decision support system for thoracic surgery. Another aim was to let future users test the system after it had been redesigned and evaluate the concept behind it. The thesis also investigates users? experience of the system and their views on whether it would be applicable in their daily work practice.

A manufacturing machine at the engineering company Sandvik Coromant has a positioning table which task is to move an item linearly. The positioning table has a linear motor capable of high velocity and acceleration. This makes it possible to achieve short cycle times and a more profitable production.The purpose of this thesis is to bring forward a new concept which is more adapted to the requirements of the positioning table. The reason is that the current positioning table provides an unnecessarily positioning accuracy of 0.01 mm, while the requirement for the positioning accuracy is just 0.1 mm. The goal is to reduce manufacturing and component costs.To develop a suitable solution an approach for the concept development process has been performed.

That an auditor brings good quality to the work he is performing is of great importance, not only for the company in question but also for its stakeholders. The information that the company disclose gets more credibility because of the auditor quality assurance. That the auditor tenure would affect the quality has been researched with different results, dependent on the legislation in the current country or region. In this paper we study how audit quality is affected of the audit tenure in Sweden. Based on research made in Belgium we have formulated hypothesis with factors that can affect the audit quality.

Quality can be defined as the ability of a business to satisfy their customers? needs and expectations. Total Quality Management is defined as the way to prevent, appraise and improve the entire organization to increase the product quality. In order to systematically increase quality in an organization, there are different quality systems in use. One example is process management, which is to divide the activities of processes.

Abstract This is a qualitative study of elderly people's experiences of loneliness and quality of life. Also the relationship between loneliness and quality of life are examined. Previous research has shown that social loneliness is about when the social context are lost while emotional loneliness can occur with the loss of close relationships. Quality of life is about a sense of connection but also the quality of life arises in the difference between the expectation of what one is and what one wishes to have. This study has shown that the interviewees preferences, activities, social networks and low expectations on their life situation makes interviewees perceive themselves to be less lonely and have a good quality of life.

ABSTRACTProblems with high turnover in nursing has escalated during the last years both nationally and internationally. according to previous research job satisfaction and quality of care was connected to specific features of the hospital work environement. It was also recommended by Coomber & Barriball (2007) to analyze job satisfaction at ward level with qualitative interviews to get a deeper and more extended insight in which specific features are of importance.The aim of this study was to investigate and describe the experiance of job satisfaction in relation to quality of care from nurses perspective. This study was carried out at an orthopaedic ward with primary nursing as organizational context of care.Two focus group interviews were conducted, they comprised nine nurses with at least two years experiance of primary nursing. A qualitative content analysis with inductive approach was used in order to develop more detailed insights of potential factors influencing work satisfaction at ward level.

ABSTRACTProblems with high turnover in nursing has escalated during the last years both nationally and internationally. according to previous research job satisfaction and quality of care was connected to specific features of the hospital work environement. It was also recommended by Coomber & Barriball (2007) to analyze job satisfaction at ward level with qualitative interviews to get a deeper and more extended insight in which specific features are of importance.The aim of this study was to investigate and describe the experiance of job satisfaction in relation to quality of care from nurses perspective. This study was carried out at an orthopaedic ward with primary nursing as organizational context of care.Two focus group interviews were conducted, they comprised nine nurses with at least two years experiance of primary nursing. A qualitative content analysis with inductive approach was used in order to develop more detailed insights of potential factors influencing work satisfaction at ward level.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how disabled people who receive the shut-in-service in one community define service quality. The purpose is also to examine the shut-in-service and to look at the users' context. Answers are sought to the following questions: - How do users experience the service quality of the shut-in-service? - What kind of service does the shut-in-service offer to the user? - How can the user be described and which are his/her requests? The analysis is based on theory about service quality by Christian Grönroos. The theory makes a distinction between two kinds of service quality, technical vs functional quality, as experienced by the user through the profile of the organization.

Higher demands of competitiveness and efficiency have led to increasing sizes of farms, with more land, more capital and more comprehensive logistics. The aim is to gain benefits of scale economies that reduce the production cost per unit. However, a greater extent of the business exposes the farm of increased risk where small deviations rapidly can erase the benefits. A modern dairy farm thus put high demands on the farmer?s ability to coordinate, plan and manage the forage production through the whole process until storage to obtain silage of the desired quality and quantity at the right price. The objective of this study was to design a simple model, i.e.

A protection helmet for young people (3-7 years) in winter environment has been developed in this thesis. The result is a concept proposal for development at STIGA Sports AB in Eskilstuna. This thesis work has been performed during 20 weeks, for a Master of Science in Product and Process development at Mälardalen University Eskilstuna Sweden in September 2009 to January 2010. The helmet is shown as a CAD model with detailed solutions to the outer shell, interior and adjustability (in sizes 50-56 cm) which are the three focused areas in the development. Also a physical model in scale 1:1 has been developed and is shown in this thesis work.To achieve the best result possible the process started with an analysis of the market and the product.

Syftet med vårt examensarbete var att ta reda på om användning av Concept Cartoons, som hjälpmedel vid naturvetenskaplig undervisning, kan skapa elevdiskussioner som har sådana kvaliteter att det gynnar naturvetenskaplig begreppsbildning. Till grund för arbetet ligger Lpo 94, kursplaner och tidigare forskning. Undersökningen genomfördes i en skola i Östra Norrbotten och undersökningsgruppen bestod av 12 elever i år 5. Undersökningsunderlaget samlades in genom bandinspelningar av gruppdiskussioner, enskilda elevintervjuer samt observationer. Resultatet visade att enbart Concept Cartoons som hjälpmedel inte är tillräckligt för att skapa kvalitativa diskussioner.

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.

Constantly growing demands from the costumers in the Automotive industry forces the subcontractors to seek alternative ways to compete. One parameter of quality is the components tolerance against NVH(Noise, Vibraion & Harshness) aspects. Kongsbergs Automotive has developed a new gear shifter platform (Shift-by-Wire) that is sold to Alfa Romeo and used in of their car models. However, the company is not pleased with the components sound quality, therefore the main purpose of this thesis is to develope a number of concepts that is supposed to enhance these NVH-aspects.To get an understanding of the problem an analysis of the causes of the emitted sound has been done parallell to a product decomposition, function decomposition and a Ishikawa-diagram. Together with these methods has a litterature study been performed to get familiar with the physics of an impact and especially the emittment of noise.

Objective: The aim of the study is to describe pupils' understanding of the mathematical concept of function. How do pupils define the concept of function? What images of the concept of function evoke when they solve tasks, which involve identifying and constructing functions?Theory: A student's thinking about a mathematical concept depends on more than just the formal definition of the concept; therefore Tall and Vinner introduce the term concept image to describe the role cognitive structures play when students learn about concepts. The cognitive structure includes all mental images, associated properties and processes that an individual associates with a given concept. According to Sfard, an individual's understanding of mathematical concepts may have different character: an operational conception, where a concept is conceived as a process and a structural conception, where the given concept is conceived as an object, that is, as a whole.Method: 16 pupils at the Science Program at two different upper secondary schools inSweden answered a questionnaire on the mathematical concept of function.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how different kinds of information seekers are evaluating information quality in the information flow online. To address the problem stated, qualitative interviews were carried out with a librarian as a reference person and a group consisting of journalists and scientists. The result of the study implies that the reference person is well aware of the strategies employed by her in the search process. However, the respondents are not aware of the strategies they are actually using. An explanation is the respondents lack of education in information seeking.