When managing the quality of a service producing industry?s products, the industry faces greater challenges than the manufacturing industries do. Today?s globalization puts further pressure on service producing companies around the world to work at their absolute maximum. So, how do service producing companies work to manage quality? In this essay the writers take a deeper look at the travel agency Ving, part of My Travel Northern Europe.

When managing the quality of a service producing industry?s products, the industry faces greater challenges than the manufacturing industries do. Today?s globalization puts further pressure on service producing companies around the world to work at their absolute maximum. So, how do service producing companies work to manage quality? In this essay the writers take a deeper look at the travel agency Ving, part of My Travel Northern Europe.

Competition of spruce fiber raw materials has increased dramatically in the last few years, leading to the fact that transportation costs in the current situation represents a much larger share of the total raw material cost. The Holmen-owned pulp industry Hallsta Paper Mill's location on the coast also constitutes a problem, because of the lack of raw material, which is much larger there, than for a pulp mill located in the hinterland. For a coastal industry it?s therefore natural to import much of the raw material by boat or to buy it from the timber terminals, in order to maintain good profitability. The purpose of this study was to analyze how the size of Hallsta Paper Mill timber supply area, without competition, with competition and with terminal use, affects the company ?s transport costs.

Background: 2007 there was 42 000 fall related accidents in Sweden and they are expected to increase the next few years. Fall among elders results in both increasing economically costs and suffering, but they can be prevented. For example has physical exercise shown an increasing effect on the risk for falls. Aim: The aim of this literature review was to investigate what influence Tai Chi has on the risk for falling among elder. Method: A literature review was conducted where eleven scientific articles were analysed with inspiration of the content analysis.

The idea with constructions made out of prefabricated elements is that it should be quick and easy to build as the demands for lower production costs, increased profitability and shorter production times are constantly increasing. High accuracy in measurements and well-balanced tolerances is required to achieve this. The fact that the concrete-elements doesn?t fit and that damage occurs during assembly is a highly topical issue even though we now have methods and systems that make this high-intensity construction possible. Through this report we want to highlight the problems that cause the dimensional and tolerance problems and give suggestions on how to come to terms with these.

With an increased demand for biomass based energy and with development of better technique harvest biomass, new possibilities open up. With the possibility to combine traditional cleaning of road?s right of way with biomass harvesting, the work of suppressing tree vegetation could become profitable or at least decrease the road maintenance cost. However, knowledge about productivity and profitability in mechanical biomass harvesting in roads? right of ways are still limited.

After the deregulation of the Swedish pharmacy market customers can be lost due to stock-outs. Optimization of pharmacy inventory levels has thus become increasingly important. To minimize inventory costs while considering the cost of shortages the latter must be estimated. However, the shortage cost is very difficult to compute. Thus, the aim of this paper is to estimate the pharmacy-specific shortage cost parameter and its relation to other inventory costs.

The aim of this study was to quantify the productivity and the costs of different harvesting systems (teams), containing harvesters equipped with accumulating harvester heads and forwarders, in first commercial thinnings were an integrated harvest of pulpwood and energy wood were performed. In the beginning the plan was to study and measure 20 sites before and after harvest. Due to storms during the summer of 2010, complete data could only be obtained from 8 of these 20 sites. Seven of these sites were privately owned and one was owned by UPM, all of the sites had been pre-commercially thinned. The mean stem density before harvest was 2578 stems per ha and the mean stem volume was 0.074 m3solid over bark.On average 1518 stems/ha was harvested.

Background: The situation for Swedish agricultural production today is characterized by an increased competition, particularly after the country joined the European Union. Swedish agricultural production laws guarantee safe, high quality foodstuffs. However, due to these strict laws, Swedish farmers face higher production costs than their competitors. Meanwhile, cheaper imported goods compete freely on the Swedish market. Swedish agricultural production must find new ways to survive in the increasing competition.

The aiming with this project is to find out if a small scale chicken production can be profitable, from day-old chicks to a processed smoked product out to stores and consumers. The products will not be available in the stores all the time because we will give the customers quality rather than quantity, so when the product can?t be found in the stores the customers will ask for it. The conclusion I found out is that it might be hard to raise chickens in these scale from an economic point of view the costs for transport, logistics, slaughter and marketing are to high..

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.

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.

Nature?s Best is a quality-label for Swedish Eco-tourism. It is one of very few active ecotourism labels and the only one that claims quality as its main focus. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the certification scheme Nature?s Best with regards to the values the certification creates for the companies that certify their products.

In some coastal areas in Sweden water shortage sometimes appears because the withdrawal of groundwater is greater than the groundwater recharge. It creates a situation where the available groundwater is insufficient to support residents and businesses with drinking water. The high withdrawal of groundwater also creates a risk for saltwater intrusion to drinking water wells. The problem most commonly occurs during the summer when the groundwater recharge is low, but the population is high, due to tourism and summer residents.The purpose of this study was to investigate how local water supply in areas affected by water shortage can be solved as sustainable as possible. The work was divided into three parts where the first part comprised of a literature review on water systems in which four different options were investigated: artificial groundwater recharge, rainwater harvesting, desalination and water reuse.

The purpose of this study was to understand how the concept of quality as an idea was spread to and translated in municipal elderly care. A central question was: How does literature, policy documents and key people describe the function and meaning of the concept of quality? The method of analysis was a qualitative case study with a critical discourse. The theoretical framework of the study is mainly what is known as institutional theory and a line of thought describing how ideas are transferred and spread. The theoretical focus is on how original ideas are interpreted and why they gain a foothold in new contexts.