The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of activities, flows and waste in a company's production process. By performing a value stream analysis, non-value adding activities are identified in a production process and then the suggested improvements that can reduce lead times will be stated. The value-stream mapping identifies the flow of information and the flow of material in a production process and this provides the basis for the identification of non-value adding activities.We conducted the study at Lammhults Möbel AB in Lammhult Sweden, where the production flow of Spira-21 has been investigated. This to identify any non-value adding activities that affect the flow negative and consumes time and money in a non-value adding way.A reasonable approach for the project was taken by studying the methodologies and theories. We conducted interviews and site surveys at Lammhults Möbel AB where the flow of information and material in the production process were investigated.

Wood pellets are an upgraded product of residuals from several wood processing industries, for example saw mills and pulp industries. The pellets are produced by pressing the milled and dried sawdust to cylindrical units with a higher density than the initial raw material. Pellets have great benefits compared to the raw material: high energy per volume, good transport and storage properties and homogeneity. Several parameters collaborate in the whole process, which makes it complex. Wood is a heterogeneous material, chemically and structurally dependent on wood parts, habitat and storage procedures.

The aim of this study was to analyze the assessment of the primary school, from the teacher?s perspective. There has been an ongoing discussion regarding assessment and about the purposes of assessment for a long time. But there is a paucity of research on what teachers believe about. This study examined primary teachers? beliefs on major purposes of assessment.Assessment is the process of gathering and interpreting information about students? learning.

Detta examensarbete utfördes på DM-Motorbearbetningen vid Scania CV AB i Södertälje. DM har en plan för att öka kapaciteten i tillverkningen, detta gör att det under de närmaste åren kommer påbörjas ett antal investeringsprojekt i nya produktionsavsnitt. I dagens konkurrensutsatta marknader blir det viktigare och viktigare att vara effektiv och att ha korta ledtider i allt arbete som utförs inom industrin. I och med detta finns det stora vinster i att vid uppstart av nytt produktionsavsnitt kunna korta ned tiden som det tar till full produktionstakt. Fokus i detta arbete har legat på att identifiera möjliga orsaker till att denna tid blivit längre än vad som planerats i tidigare projekt på Scania.Historiskt när Scania har projekterat och startat nya produktionsavsnitt har det alltid tagit en viss tid innan förväntad volym och kvalitet uppnåtts efter produktionsstart.

Many research reports mention the fact that a huge number of all system development projects never reach a successful ending; with other words never fulfil formulated goals. By identifying and forming success factors (and in some aspect risk factors) that the project manager in practice can use, this study may be seen as a step in the direction towards minimising the high number of failed system development projects. The purpose of this research report is to investigate how a system development project, where the development process is based on a specific development or process model (in this case the Waterfall model), can and should be driven. I aim to clarify what is demanded of a project leader for the specific development process and give an account for which eventual leadership qualities that can be well suited for given situation in relation to the need for technical competence. Among other things the project manager should inspire confidence, drive, be a decision maker, engage and own some form of basic knowledge in the field of system development.

This study aims to find out how the way out of homelessness can look and be experienced and in what way persons with experience of being homeless might think about our society´s different solutions to this problem. The study is based on five half-structured qualitative interviews with persons who have experience of being homeless. The theoretical perspectives used to analyze the empirism are ?Stages of Change? and ?The Process of Role Exit?, both dealing with changing processes. Our results show that the way out of homelessness can be long and very hard to achieve, and the change in housing situation can be either a process towards a more and more stable housing or through an opportunity that suddenly appears.Another result shows that people with the experience of being homeless can be negative to the solutions offered by our society but be positive to the idea of Housing First.

Recent years have been very turbulent for most private equity firms. Especially the financial meltdown in global economy has affected the industry, but also the public pressure has made private equity houses change their control strategies towards more conventional methods used in public companies. This thesis aims to put light on the control methods used in listed private equity houses which use a buyout strategy. The paper describes how the control methods change over the different phases the asset experience and how different value generating strategies use altered control methods. Using Merchant's (2003) framework for management control systems and Berg and Gottschalg's (2004) research on value generating strategies in buyouts the thesis shows that action controls as designing instructions for the board and a business plan, together with goal alignment is the commonly used control strategy directly after the acquisition.

AbstractThe customer demand for ecological products has increased in recent years, within the garden industry this mainly concerns herbs and other edible plants. The organic trend is increasing and more people are aware of the environment and want to take responsibility for it through their purchases for their garden as well.In this essay the aim is to investigate customer demand and the possibility of selling organicperennial plants in eight garden centres on the Åland islands and in Gävle/Sandviken. I include two garden centres with an organic profile to get a wider point of view. I investigate the global market for organic perennials and look further into existing certification standards on the Swedish market today.The methods I have been using are interviews and a literature study.The study shows that the experienced demand for organic perennials is small in both of myinvestigated groups. The biggest motivation for starting to sell organic perennials would be to find a supplier of these plants and that more customer would ask for them.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vilka orsaker som hindrar ett företag att effektivt utnyttja sin business intelligence-process samt hur ett företag bör agera för att skapa högre effektivitet i business intelligence-processen. En fallstudie valdes som forskningsstrategi med kvalitativ empirisk data, vilken samlades in genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer med användare av business intelligence-processen. Studien visade att orsaker som hindrar ett företag att effektivt utnyttja sin business intelligence-process var: avsaknad av inriktning för insamling av information, överflöd av information hos beslutsfattare men samtidigt brist på information inom vissa områden. Det var heller inte klarlagt vem som skall ta del av vilken information, en central lagringsplats för omvärldsinformation saknades, underrättelserna var inte alltid anpassade till beslutsfattarna, ansvarsområden inom processen var oklara och stöd saknades från ledningen. För att skapa en effektiv business intelligence- process visade studien, att ett företag bör arbeta efter en processcykel med klara ansvarsområden, en väldefinierad inriktning för insamlingen av data och information, en väl utkommunicerad lagringsplats för information om omvärlden, analyser som täcker användares olika behov, kontinuerlig kommunikation mellan BI-enheten och beslutsfattare samt säkerställa att tillräcklig med resurser allokeras till business-intelligence processen..

Syftet med denna uppsats är att, ur ett processorienterat perspektiv, undersöka hur IS/IT används som möjliggörare av affärsprocessförändring. Vår undersökning baserar sig på ett fallföretags förändring av affärsprocessen lagerhantering. De slutsatser vi kan dra grundar sig på fallföretagets situation och de förändringar som de har gjort. Företaget har som vi ser det genomfört en process-redesign. För att möjliggöra process-redesign har Företaget implementerat ett helintegrerat informationssystem med gemensam databas.

This thesis aims to explore the process where strategies for music artists are created by record companies. We describe and analyze how decisions regarding signing, distribution, marketing, bookings and co-operations are made. Through our study we find that the strategy process can be described as a pattern according to Mintzberg's definition. The "inside-out" perspective is dominating and the record companies base their strategies on internal core competencies and the artistry and will of the music artist. The underlying causes of this are the uncertainty that characterizes the industry; the focus on social relations; and the importance of cultural legitimacy..

In recent years, several problems in the field of assistive device have been lifted. To manage the development Beslutsstöd (Decision support) has emerged as a systematic working method. Beslutsstöd is designed as a guideline and serves as a tool for physical therapists and occupational therapists in the prescription process of assistive devices. Beslutsstöd thereby aims to improve the quality and effectiveness of the prescribing process of assistive device in the organization of the municipalities. An implementation evaluation about how the implementation of Beslutsstöd in the municipalities did proceed has not been done.

The purpose of this thesis was to increase the understanding and discuss safety aspects in two stairwells on Nyforsgatan in Eskilstuna, where the buildings were built during the years 1965-1975. I have presented a proposal for improvement through lighting. I have through different methods, such as surveys, interviews, literature studies and observations, come to a conclusion: that there are opportunities for improvement through better lighting that allows orientation in space and creates a nice atmosphere which will remove the feeling of not being safe, e.g. dark corners and shadows. It has been an exciting process to gather enough of facts to rely on and to develop the lighting design for the environments.

Our surrounding world is constantly changing and to be able to keep up with the fast pace of change organizations need to be prepared to transform as well. If there is a need for an organization to undergo a change process, the people constituting the organization also need to be prepared to change their behavior. In order for the change process to turn out successful, it is of the utmost importance that all employees are given the chance to take part in the process. The challenge for leaders during a change process is, therefore, to ensure that their employees actively get involved.The purpose of this study is to apply Human Resource (HR) theories on to an organization in order to critically review how leaders in practice, can involve their employees, on the basis of a change process.The study is a qualitative case study, the empirical material has been collected at Falkenbergs Sparbank with the help of one unstructured interview with an employee at the marketing department and four semi structured interviews with the office managers.Relationship oriented leadership is beneficial to use during change since it advocates an open relationship between co-workers and exchange of information and knowledge. Relationship oriented leadership is considered to be a good leadership style if organizations wants to turn Human Resource theories in to practice.

For systems with multicore processors contention for shared resources is a problem that occurs when several memory-intensive processes are executed in parallel within the same memory domain. This contention has a direct influence on the performance of the system and is a complex problem that has been recognized for a long time. An attractive and actively studied way to minimize this problem is by using a process scheduler adapted to allocate processor cores in a way such that contention for shared resources is minimized.With the introduction of multicore NUMA-systems (Non-Uniform Memory Access) the situation has become even more complex. In these systems the access time for processor cores to different memory domains vary depending on factors such as distance and load. Thus, the process scheduler also has to consider where the memory of each process is placed to minimize the distance and balance the load on each memory domain.This report presents a user-level process scheduler for a NUMA-system based on the multicore processor Tilera TILEPro64.