SUMMARYInventory of raw materials holds an important role in companies within the manufacturingsector. The inventory works as a buffer that secure the supply of materials to the productionunit. The aim of the inventory is to ensure that the company is able to meet the customers?demands despite fluctuations and variations in the material flow. The size of the warehouseand the layout are physical limitations for the quantity of articles that can be stored.

Problem. With the Swedish public sectors problem with efficiency in mind, several reforms have beeninitiated during the last decades. These reforms go, in academic contexts, under the name?New public management?. The reforms have resulted in, among other things, an increasedcompetition, privatization and goal-orientation in the public sector.

It is important that organizations today focus on continuous improvements in order to face the growing competition in the world. A company needs a corporate culture that supports and encourages the employees to be creative and innovative in their work. This is necessary for the company if they are striving towards continuous learning and development within their organization.The main purpose of this paper is to investigate how the culture differences between Sweden and China affect Sandvik AB. We will also study how the company manages continuous improvements and what consequences culture differences have on their work.Our paper is a single case study at Sandvik AB in Sweden and China. We have visited Sandvik in Sandviken to conduct a series of interviews with employees of different position within the company and with dissimilar work tasks.

ITT Flygt is a world leading company that mainly manufactures submersible pumps. A problem of ITT Flygt is that product development projects rarely manage to hold the estimated project time. It shows that something unexpected occurs in projects quite often, which results in delays. The delays can both be due to an optimistic time plan of projects and risks in product development projects which are not discovered at an early stage. This added with unforeseen delays makes it difficult for ITT Flygt to estimate the duration of their projects.The goal with the Master thesis is to examine a suitable method for simulation of project time.

For nearly twenty years people have been talking about Product models, but given that the building industry is so conservative, it is hard to implement new working methods. Product models are these days known as Building Information Modeling, BIM. People often say they work with BIM but they often forget the most important part, the information. A 3D model should be linked with characteristics and information. Information that can be invaluable for the facility manager.We have a vision that in the best of worlds the facility manager would be able to "walk" into the model and see what kind of installations are inside the wall or in the roof.

Due to the globalization today the competition in the market has in- creased and it requires flexibility and produce according to customer demand. In order to reduce the cost of wages industrial companies are now considering moving the manufacturing to low-cost countries. To keep up with the competition in the market without moving the manu- facturing abroad, Lean Automation was developed. The concept of Lean Automation is to reduce the perceived complexity with automa- tion and make automation available for new users and in new applica- tions.Haldex Brake Products are situated in Sweden and want to maintain the manufacturing of the automatic brake adjusters in the country. It is a product well-known and highly exposed to the competition in the mar- ket.

Concrete floors have traditionally had no problems with annoying vibrations. However with the demand for larger spans the floors need to be made more slender with a higher degree of utilization and lower mass. Therefore new floors may have problems with vibration serviceability. This thesis studies the vibration characteristics of hollow core slabs. The analysis was made in the finite element program Ansys. The hollow core slab was subjected to a varying force simulating one person walking across the slab.

Örebro UniversityDepartment of Social SciencesSociology and social psychology, Continuation course, 61-90 p.Essay 15 p, Spring -08.Title: ?Youth (work)seekers?Author: Karolina LindellAbstractThis essay focuses on young people?s social background when they apply for their first job. I have interviewed four young people from a small town in Sweden, to see how social background and identity affects their vital conditions in general. I?m interested understanding the relationship between structure and agency.

SUMMARYInventory of raw materials holds an important role in companies within the manufacturingsector. The inventory works as a buffer that secure the supply of materials to the productionunit. The aim of the inventory is to ensure that the company is able to meet the customers?demands despite fluctuations and variations in the material flow. The size of the warehouseand the layout are physical limitations for the quantity of articles that can be stored.

SUMMARYInventory of raw materials holds an important role in companies within the manufacturingsector. The inventory works as a buffer that secure the supply of materials to the productionunit. The aim of the inventory is to ensure that the company is able to meet the customers?demands despite fluctuations and variations in the material flow. The size of the warehouseand the layout are physical limitations for the quantity of articles that can be stored.

This master?s thesis was performed during the fall of 2006 at Cloetta Fazer AB in Ljungsbro. Cloetta Fazer is the market leader in Scandinavia of manufacturing confectionary and chocolates. The purpose of the project has been to identify causes that impact the quantity of waste in production as well as a cost/benefit analysis of the solutions that can reduce the problem of production waste.The work includes four production lines that are individually designed depending on what kind of product that are produced on the line. By using qualitative and quantitative methods such as focus groups, interviews and observations data has been collected.

In the production of pulp, paper and cardboard, a large amount of water is used daily. The water has to be purified in the internal purifying plant before it reaches the receiving body of water. In the biological purifying stage at the Stora Enso Skoghall mill, an aerated basin is used where the microorganisms, using oxygen, oxidize the organic material to carbon dioxide. The air is pumped from the bottom of the basin and the oxygen can then be transported from the air bubbles to the water through diffusion. The problem with aeration of waste water from the forest industry is that wood residues, such as fatty acids, are making the transport of oxygen in water more difficult.

A change is gradually taking place in the media industry. Traditional communication channels are being replaced by new, electronic, ones (Johnson, 2003). Segmented marketing is gaining popularity, as the mass-marketing model is becoming more or less obsolete (Kotler et al. 2001). At the same time, the consumers? attention span is more divided than ever (Neff, 2004).

As demand for renewable energy is increasing rapidly, the market for biomass pellets is expected to continue to grow in the near future. Most of the new raw materials that are discussed for pellet production have one thing in common; the production costs will increase compared to using traditional raw materials such as sawdust and planer shavings. The aim of this thesis is to investigate to what degree increased use of new raw materials for pellet production will affect the general pellet prices in Sweden and to survey what plans Swedish pellet producers have concerning new raw materials. To investigate the raw material situation of the Swedish pellet producers an industry survey was performed. Literature studies were also made on previous research in the subject field. Calculations of the production costs for pellets were done for the raw materials sawdust, wet sawmill chips and energy wood respectively. New raw materials are already used by the large-scale pellet producers in Sweden.

The recent turbulence in the financial markets has contributed to the banks becoming more restrictive to lend to real estate financing. Deleveraging in Europe's banking sector has also contributed to banks reducing their leverage and increasing capital adequacy to meet the new requirements. Loan-to-value ratios in real estate loans have fallen while banks' interest margins have increased, which has made property investors to look for alternative sources of funding in the capital markets. The two most interesting forms of financing for real estate right now is bonds and preferred shares as they fit property companies that generate stable and predictable cash flows. A bond is an interest-bearing debenture certifying that the purchaser has lent money to the company that issued the bond.