The number of ideas at innovative companies usually exceeds the amount of available human ormaterial recourses, this include ideas for development of new products. Since they are not able to doeverything they want to do they have to choose between ideas to develop new products. This includesthe decision on when to start, stop or kill a project as well as the thought process of prioritizing betweenongoing and potential projects.Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is an organizational process, with the purpose of systematicallyorganizing and running the activities that aim to evaluate, select and prioritize ideas and projects fordeveloping new products. PPM include four major goals to be fulfilled; Maximizing Value of thePortfolio, Achieving a Balanced Portfolio, Achieving a Strategic Alignment and Running the RightNumber of Projects.The purpose of the thesis was to develop a more visual and formal PPM process for the early stages inproduct development in one department at St Jude Medical AB, Sweden.The thesis was conducted by following a methodology known as Process Modules. The methodology isan approach for developing a PPM process that fits a specific company.

Mediation of fiction for adult users in Swedish public libraries is a subject which has been little studied from a theoretical perspective. The motivation for this thesis was based on this realization, and the opinion that actual library users too seldom get their voices heard in library and information science-research. The thesis analyzes interviews with seven library users in which they have been asked to talk about the librarys work with mediating fiction. The answers are analyzed using a discourse analytic approach to see how the librarys work with mediating fiction is constructed in the users talk.Two main discourses are identified, one authoritative and one neutral. In the authoritative discourse librarians are talked of as experts who have the knowledge to guide users to the ?right? literature.

Min essä handlar om de erfarenheter jag har som manlig pedagog i förskolan och hur de har påverkat mig som manlig pedagog inom förskolan och mina självupplevda händelser som påverkat mig i min yrkesroll. Den gemensamma nämnaren i mina upplevda händelser jag beskriver är att jag möter tankar om den manliga pedagogen som en förmedlare av värden som antingen ses som goda, eller som hot. Mitt dilemma handlar om att jag som manlig pedagog får förhålla mig till generaliseringar om män som potentiella pedofiler men också generaliseringar om mannen som normskapande och auktoritär aktör i en kvinnodominerad miljö. Uppsatsens huvudsakliga syfte har varit att problematisera och synliggöra olika perspektiv på manliga pedagoger inom förskolan. Min essä sträcker sig över en tidsperiod från slutet av 1990-talet fram till idag.Uppsatsen är skriven i en vetenskaplig essäform.

This two years master?s thesis is a review and exploration of the Swedish debate concerning children?s literature from the 19th century to the present, as well as the evaluation and analysis of four adaptations of the tale Red Riding Hood. The aims are to identify how ideas and values regarding the role of children?s literature in society have developed over time and to contribute with a knowledge base for continued reflection and discussion on the subject of children?s reading and mediation of children?s literature in public libraries.The theory and method used in the thesis, is primarily based on the discourse analysis of Michel Foucault. I have identified four main discourses: the educational discourse, the liberation discourse, the politicized dis- course and the popular discourse.

In the essay, the balance between being an educator and a mother of a child with autism is explored in respect to how the roles might influence the actions of a pre-school teacher. Writing is used as a method of reflection, it gives the teacher a chance to take a step back and view her practical experiences from a novel perspective; conclusions are recounted throughout the teachers narrative. The essay is based on the following questions; which problems might arise in the meeting with parents such as Adams where there is a suspicion of autism for the child? Which advantages/disadvantages might the teacher?s personal experience of autism have for the role as educator? How would the dual roles as educator and mother of an autistic child best be balanced in the future?The essay highlights special educational and parent perspectives on the matter of autism. Professor of pedagogy Claes Nilholm, specializes in special needs education.

For most dog owners today it is natural to use acoustic stimuli such as talking to communicate with their pets. Words are used both to ask the dogs to perform tricks, as well as to hold ?conversations? with the dog. This literature review looks at how dogs perceive human acoustical communication and how this can influence the behaviour of the dog. This information could be used e.g.

Nature is in many ways considered a source to both physical and mental health among people. Trends in today?s society reveal that children become more distanced to nature. Seen from the perspective of sustainable development this trend is considered crucial: it is of importance that children in their early ages experience nature positively in order to develop a dedication towards environmental issues as adults.The purpose of this study is to investigate how teachers use outdoor learning as an educational tool. Research data were collected through a series of interviews.

Title: Strategies for competition ? a study of the Swedish contact lenses market.Authors: Pernilla AArskog and Annika Lange.Background: As a market gets more mature and the competition increases, it is more important for a company to apply the right strategic perspective. There are four fundamental strategic perspectives for a service-oriented business: a core product-, a price-, an image- and a service perspective. This study is a about service management and take its point from the theories from the Nordic School about strategies for competition, customer value, perceived customer quality and customer loyalty.Purpose: The main purpose with this study is to analyze and evaluate how the actors at the Swedish market of contact lenses should compete to gain further competitive advantages.Method: The study includes four qualitative interviews with two traditional opticians and two Internet based businesses, but also a survey with 106 contact lens users is included.Analysis: In the analyse part of this thesis it was concluded that the traditional opticians conception about their customer not agrees with what the customer evaluate as important. Many of the customers have thought about changing their optician, and besides that do not recommend their optician, and can there for not be categorize as loyal customers.

The present study examined high school students? attitudes to higher education at university/college and their study engagement in an industrial town in klarälvdalen in the county of Värmland. The main research question was whether there are any differences between students in vocational and theoretically oriented programs regarding their attitude to higher education and study engagement. The results was also compared with a study with the same research question conducted in Countryside town in fryksdalen, Värmland county to see whether attitude and student engagement differ between high school students in different parts of Värmland. The method used was quantitative with data collected by using questionnaires.

In this report a system for Rapid Control Prototyping, RCP, is evaluated through animplementation of the motor control methods Field Oriented Control, FOC, and Space VectorPulse Width Modulation, SVPWM. The evaluation emphasizes on time-consumption andresource utilization on the used hardware and on usability for of software.A new mechatronic laboratory is under development at ABB Corporate Research in Västerås. Itwill be used for both mechanical and motion control design using existing and new hardware.The control structure in a traditional robot system will be interfaced to a rapid prototypingsystem which should allow easy changes to algorithms at different levels in the system.The system designated for this project comes from National Instruments and constitutesLabVIEW Real-time and FPGA module as the software tools. The hardware is a NI Single-Board RIO (Reconfigurable Input Output), sbRIO, development board including a Field-Programmable Gate Array, FPGA, from Xilinx and a microprocessor from FreescaleSemiconductor. Graphical programming is performed in the LabVIEW environment, andthrough Xilinx tools the LabVIEW FPGA code is compiled to VHDL code.A pre-study was carried out to clarify the concept of RCP and investigate different systems forRCP and their traits.

The perspective on health among school pupils needs to be extended. School is animportant arena for the promoting of health among youth, primarily from a healthpromoting perspective and a proactive perspective. A holistic approach has gatheredsome ground in the policy documents for the nine year compulsory school in Sweden, butin what way, and what effect does it have on the governing authorities and on schoollevel?The aim of the study is to investigate the coherence between national, municipal andlocal levels regarding the view on health among pupils. In order to do this, the guidelinesfor pupil health in the municipality of Örebro and operational plans for seven F9 schoolsin the municipality of Örebro will be studied and compared to the government bill?Health, learning and sense of security?.

These days most companies conduct some form of work for the external environment, quality and safety. In connection with this work, some companies have chosen to get management systems certified by any applicable standard for one or more of the fields while other companies have chosen other ways that are not associated with certification.In light of the fact that the individual systems are becoming unmanageable an increasing number of these companies are faced with the decision whether to integrate and coordinate these different systems or not. In order to study the possibilities of a company?s system coordination an assessment of elements particularly interesting for the company was performed. The key elements and focuses in the evaluation were staff access to information, experiences from other companies and environmental work status for some of the organization's companies.

The research within the management control systems-field and more specifically performance management has been rather shallow and not much has happened the last decades besides the balanced scorecard. The researchers see a lack of studies focusing on the effects of an integrated performance management system and also how it affects the different hierarchical levels and the tasks to perform.We decided to perform an essay with case study-characteristics by looking at both the strategic and tactical level at Volvo Group, or more specifically Group Trucks. We performed three different interviews, one at the group level and two at the division level. The aim was to see what effect an integrated performance management system had on the tactical level (i.e. the divisions).Our findings and corresponding analysis suggested that Volvo was a rather centralized company in order to get the performance management system to work by enabling a ?weekly control?.

In the discourse of teaching it?s often mentioned that the pupil?s previous knowledge and experience plays an important part in the process of learning. For the teachers it?s in general crucial to be familiar with their pupils abilities and skills, talents and shortcomings in order to successfully teach them. Knowledge and an understanding of their pupils, also helps the teacher to organize and customize a successful teaching for each individual.

Today we see a growing need and interest in working towards sustainable development. To be able to contribute to a sustainable development as individuals/business we need to emphasize the importance of education and contextualisation that learning occurs in a sense that is relevant to the learner.This is the background to this study, which in turn is the basis for an education that focuses on how to environmentally secure your purchases, an opportunity for us to set environmental standards purchasing products and services. The process for purchase is considered by many to be a key factor in businesses work towards sustainable development. Key people in this process and target audience for this education is environmental, purchasing and procurement managers.The purpose of this study is to design an education calledMiljösäkrade inköp from the target audiences? knowledge, interests and attitudes, together with literature.