Benchmarking is an established method of working which is often used in order to develop the quality of the organization. However, almost 70% of the organizations with benchmarking fail due to the lack of planning and structuring of the benchmarking exercise. Maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry are one of those who have decided to conduct benchmarking. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to gain knowledge of how the maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry deliberately structure and plan to use benchmarking as a driving force for quality development in the maintenance sections.The study is a hermeneutic case study. Telephone interviews and document analysis have been used as data acquisition methods.The results show that there is a lack of both planning and structuring in the benchmarking process, and lack of management commitment for quality improvements within industrial maintenance.

The overall aim is to examine how the European Union Water Framework Directive has affected the local water management in the catchment Märstaån situated in the eastern part of the lake Mälaren river basin, Sweden. The first part of the study gives an historical overview of the area with focus on how the old agricultural landscape was handling the nutrient load from farming activities by means of different kinds of wetlands. By using the concept of the procedural landscape, introduced by Torsten Hägerstrand , together with historical maps with dates starting from the 17th century, the pre-modern landscape is analyzed.  The second part is an investigation, based on qualitative data, on how the different actors in the catchment area work together to secure the water quality for the Märstaån river. The analysis shows that the Märstaån catchment river systems are mostly unchanged in the rural areas.  The exception is the mainstream section of the Märstaån river running partly underground today and the Halmsjöbäcken river that is heavily affected by the Arlanda airport situated within the catchment area.

To be able to compete on the market environmental Management System has become an important part of operations work. However, many companies still haven?t implemented an environmental management systems due to lack of time and the high costs. One of the companies with this problem is Falu Bildemontering. Their goal is to accredited according to the ISO 14 001 certificate.

This paper analyzes the auditor choices for a sample of 300 predominantly small Swedish firms, all located in Umeå. Our hypothesis was based on the complexity of a firm, the need of external financing, leverage, and the need of extra consultance from the auditfirm. Our definition of auditor quality is based on prior studies, and is frequently used by authors in this area. The assumption is based on that the auditor quality increases with the size of the auditfirm and the degree of the auditor. The auditor quality is therefor depending on the choice between an auditor from the group ?Big 5? or not, and the choice of an auditor with an higher degree.

Audit is a service of society that takes place in the public interest. To guarantee the quality of auditing a quality control is done with predetermined time intervals. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyze the concept quality and the procedure of the quality control and further to tie concepts like trust and ethics to the audit profession. To make the picture complete the paper also provides an insight regarding what deficiencies in quality, in other words failures, means to the audit profession. By performing semi-structured interviews with seven qualified auditors, active on different auditing firms in Skåne, substantial information was collected.

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.

Title:The issue of unplanned stoppages caused by failure in medical technology equipment ? A study within the hospital of Kalmar with a focus on manage-ment, security and quality Author:Anna Förster, Ambika Linder, Sandra Nyqvist Tutor:Thomas Karlsson Institution:Linnaeus School of Business and Economics - Linnaeus University Kalmar Date:2011-01-14 Purpose:The purpose of this study was to examine unplanned stoppages caused by medical technology equipment failure in the healthcare operation within the hospital of Kalmar. Our study is based on a number of specifically selected incidents which show the consequences these disruptions cause in management, security and quality within the operation. Our intention was also to examine what role the medical technology department of the hospital plays in the care production operation during these unplanned stoppages. Method:Through a qualitative study we have generated material from a number of interviews with staff working in the hospital of Kalmar.

This master thesis has been done at Enea Epact AB. The purpose of this thesis is to develop and implement a Link Quality Control algorithm for GPRS/EPGRS in the current testing tool. A Link Quality Control (LQC) shall take quality values from mobile stations and base stations and decide a codingsscheme that opimizes the throughput of data. The Advantage with LQC is that it adapts the used coding scheme to the channel quality. If the channel quality is too bad for the used coding scheme, a slower coding scheme with more redundancy should be selected.

Aim: The aim was to describe adult patients quality of life after cardiac arrest and resuscitation with CPR. Method: A literature overview based on eight scientific articles and one master thesis. Results: The result is presented in three categories, physical, psychological and social quality of life. Sleeping disorders, fatigue and low energy level affected the physical quality of life in a negative way. The psychological quality of life was often impaired the first time after the cardiac arrest, to be improved over time.

AbstractThe aim of this literature review was to describe the quality of life in stoma patients after stomasurgery. Different combinations of the keywords ?stoma?, ?Quality of Life?, ?stomasurgery? were used when searching in the databases Medline, Cinahl, Academic Search Elite and PubMed. A total of nineteen articles were used in the result. Fifteen studies had comparing design and four studies had describing design.

Since Sweden joined the European Union all Swedish fruit and vegetables are classified according to EU Quality standards. One important function is the product description and how it can facilitate the trade; for example in better comparing prices and also to guarantee the quality of the product. This quality standards or product descriptions are written as words of an Act and obligatory for all countries that has joined the EU. It?s often a demand from the customers to be certificated according to some of many certificating systems. One example is the common worldwide GLOBAL GAP-certification system created by the organisation EUREP which represents the leading European retail traders.

The purpose of this Master Thesis is to investigate whether the technical service available in the "Reading and Writing Corner" has an influence on the total quality of service in a public library. This service is intended to give sensory/print-handicapped persons access to information. The title KOM LOSS is a Swedish expression for "come on" and LOSS is short for reading and writing support. I have chosen to study three libraries in the region of Västra Götaland, Sweden. The thesis examines total quality from the aspects of goal steering, accessibility, education and marketing.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to study the relations between internal information and the principal business objectives in a knowledge organization. The questions are: how does the organization behave to its internal information resources, how is the information management related to the principal objectives and strategies, what information policy does the organization develop, and how is the management experienced by the employees. The purpose was to study the supply and management of information designed for internal use and the study was carried out with qualitative, semi-structured interviews to get a picture of the internal information management. The informants were mostly key persons with deep knowledge of internal information.

Return handling is often regarded as a slow and complex process. Studies have shown that it is not unusual for a return to cost up to nine times as much as a standard outbound delivery. An efficient return handling process is therefore essential to all competitive companies dealing with logistics. This report investigates, analyzes and gives suggestions on development with the purpose to improve the return handling process at LensLogistics AB in Kista, north of Stockholm, Sweden. The study has been conducted from a deliberately practical point of view in order to suggest improvement suggestions possible to implement and thereby change the entire return handling process.

This thesis examines how a company can get an effective, high quality, maintenance of their computerized systems. After literary studies concerning the life cycle activity Maintenance we have studied how the maintenance at the department IT Supply of IKEA IT AB in Älmhult is carried out. What steps and measures in the analyzing of results of changes are carried out and if they have predefined processes for changes. Based on the facts we found most important in our literary studies we have created a model and theoretically applied this to the maintenance of a specific system to see what they can work with to further improve the quality and efficiency in their maintenance. The basis for our thesis is literary studies and the collected material has been used as a foundation for the research at the company, which was carried out through interviews.