Today, maintenance is a big part of the daily life on board ships. It is also one of the bigger expenses a shipping company has and without any loss of quality tries to run as economically advantageous as possible. In the hunt for economical savings the shore-based industry has subsequently applied the use of condition based maintenance, CBM, were a component is maintained according to its actual state. This leads to a reduction of maintenance costs since no parts are unnecessarily replaced. However, within the maritime sector a periodical maintenance is still the most commonly used maintenance system.The purpose of this paper is to chart the factors that are the reason for the low implementation of CBM on board the Swedish merchant fleet's ships.

In the construction industry today there is a significant technological revolution goingon. New methods for automated processes and information management are developedcontinuously. Intense studies are currently taking place to ensure ways and means toembrace the new technology of BIM.At the present, environmental certification systems are considered cumbersome andchallenging. However, the increasing demands of sustainable development in the constructionindustry imply that the environmental certifications will not disappear. ThisMaster Thesis examines the possibilities to apply BIM technology within the field ofenvironmental certifications to streamline the processes.The applications that provide the best opportunities are:- To use BIM to be able to, during the design stage, dynamically evaluate the resultor score a certain building will achieve.- To avoid unnecessary work through collection of data for calculations directlyfrom a BIM-model.- To be able to automate certain time consuming calculations that are currentlyperformed manually.- To automatically examine the completed model to ensure that the demands arefulfilled.The possibilities to use BIM within these areas are however limited by the technologyitself.

Lately, more and more music festivals have emerged in Sweden. People?s desire and need to visit these events only seems to increase. Cultural tourism and music tourism has developed into a significant and important part of the experience industry and it employs more and more people within the tourism industry. The purpose of this paper is to investigate which effects this can have on the local community.

Sleep is essential for all mammals and they all have different sleep patterns. Wild horses normally spend 2-8.5% of a 24-hour period in recumbent position while stabled horses lie down 11-20%. To fulfil the need of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep the horse must lie down with support against the ground for the head. The lying behavior can be affected by external stimuli such as age, food intake, bedding materials and if the horses feel safe or not. This study investigates the lying behavior of horses on different bedding materials; wood shavings and filled rubber mats (HIT SoftBed®).

Kenya is a country of 35 million people and is situated in Eastern Africa. 70% of thepopulation works within the agricultural sector and for many of them food insecurity is amajor problem. Maize and beans are today the staple food for many households. Goodfarming conditions enable two harvests per year and a potential maize yield of 4-5 tons perhectare.A major problem for many farmers in this area is the increase of the weed striga. The weedcauses severe yield losses, and has a major economic impact on smallholders.

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.

Background: The global responsibility for multinational companies is a current matter of subject. Now when the world increasingly is getting globalized, economic growth is created, which brings a bigger demand of responsibility on companies. The leading companies from every industry is often becoming the frame for how the production process works and is therefore exposed to outer pressure which, for example, is coming from consumers and the media. Since consumers at present are more aware of what they are buying and where it comes from, it is important that the companies take social responsibility. We have therefore studied three big companies within the clothing industry to see in witch way they are taking their social responsibility.Purpose: Our purpose was to explore how companies within the clothing industry describe their work with Corporate Social Responsibility, code of conducts and where the incentive behind this work is coming from.Method: We have, through a qualitative study, examined how three large companies work with Corporate Social Responsibility.

Tourism is often being viewed as one of the worlds largest sectors and a great contribution to growth and development. There is a large motivation amongst developing countries to promote themselves as a tourist destination, since they expect the tourism to generate economic growth. The government of Thailand has been promoting tourism since 1960, and the number of foreign visitors has increased from 100 000 back then to 13.5 million in 2006. The purpose of this paper was to investigate weather the increasing tourism industry in Thailand has pulled resources away from other sectors of the economy towards the tourism sector, and in that way harming Thailand?s international competitiveness and causing deindustrialization.

Problem: Small companies dominate the skin care industry, and they also face moredifficulties, constraints and resistance in strategy implementation and sustainabilitywork than other operators. Still, the trend of sustainability strategies increasesignificantly precisely in this industry.Purpose: The purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge to the field ofsustainability strategies and motives for the implementation of them in smallercompanies who engage with skin care, in Sweden.Framing of a question: Why do some smaller Swedish companies in the skin careindustry choose to implement sustainability strategies in their business?Literature: The literature functions as a framework for the study and is considered toidentify the possible reasons why small companies choose to implement sustainabilitystrategies or not. The literature is collected before the empirical data.Method: This paper is constructed by a qualitative method approach. The empiricaldata were collected through interviews, by telephone, personal meetings and email,which were then transcribed and the interpreted by a model, which the authors havecreated.Conclusion: Smaller companies are often met by larger resistance and an until up tothe present slowly emerging industry with vague rules and controls as well as ancomparative knowledge of what is good and what is not.

Apple has since their launch of the Iphone series created a billion dollar business with the market place Appstore. Third-party apps have disrupted the mobile industry, attracted a high number of developers and set the standard for the industry. Despite success, this market has yet not been the topic of any academic study, a fact that makes this thesis important. Under the assumption that apps can be regarded as a service, traditional service marketing theories have been applied with the research goal to map existing business models, evaluate revenue potential and understand best practices of marketing techniques. A series of qualitative interviews with representatives from the difference business models, backed by secondary data describing the domain shows how the Appstore has evolved over time and which marketing practices that appear successful.

The banking industry is a fundamental part of the economy in Sweden. Despite its importance, the competition and the concentration level within the Swedish banking sector is relatively unexplored. This paper aims to examine the development of the concentration level in the Swedish banking sector during a period of ten years, 2003 to 2013. The examined banks in the study are the four largest banks in Sweden; Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB and Swedbank, and four selected niche banks, ICA banken, Ikano Bank, Länförsäkringar Bank and Skandiabanken. In order to examine the development in percentage change, there are six selected variables; loans, deposits and borrowings (both public and households), net interest income and return on equity, which are observed during a period of ten years.

Since the Bruntlandreport was published 1987, companies have shown their environmental commitment through an environmental account. Companies started these accounts because their rivals started having them and today most large companies have a environmental account or sustainable development report. The information given by the companies have been seen as slanted, and others see it only as a part of the image production for the companies. There have been several investigations of the stakeholders of environmental reports and it is not clear who is the primary stakeholder, in other words who actually reads them. All different stakeholders have different views of what an environmental account should encompass.

Organic agriculture is financially promoted in Sweden by special environmental support and as consumers we are all encouraged to buy organic food. At the same time scholars at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences claim that organic farming does not provide any environmental benefits. The main criticism is that organic farming has lower yields than conventional, which means that more land is needed to produce the same amount of food as in conventional farming, leading to deforestation and loss of biodiversity. As for climate change, the critics claim that the significantly higher productivity in conventional crop production compared to organic, releases surplus land, which could be used for bio-fuel production and thereby replace the fossil fuels. The critics also claim that organic farming causes higher nutrient leaching than conventional.

Online shopping is growing and its turnover increases each year. Internet hastherefore become an important retail location for companies. Web shops lack thephysical room for marketing as well as face-to-face interaction between customer andsalesperson. Therefore there is a need to develop marketing and customercommunication methods for this way of shopping. In physical shops the customer hasthe ability to try on the garments and be pampered by the staff.

Purpose: The aim with the report is to investigate if the South East Asian customer on the food processing market base their investments on Total Cost of Ownership and if so, which are the cost drivers considered most vital. Moreover, do these cost-drivers diverge from the perception FP Ltd has, and if so, can a Total Cost of Ownership-model help to achieve a mutual understanding? Methodology: First a descriptive approach will be taken, identifying FP Ltd?s employers? perception on how to meet the customer. This will later be compared to our empirical findings of the actual customer behaviour in Thailand and Vietnam. Thorough analyse of the gap between the two parts will give us the outcome whether or not FP Ltd will have any use of presenting a quantitative model justifying their higher price.