As a result of global competition, companies within the automotive industry are required to improve their production systems to achieve sustainable and competitive production. To attain operational excellence, companies have adopted concepts like lean and World Class Manufacturing (WCM).In order to deliver, companies need to increase the availability and reliability of production equipment. This demands focus on both operational and strategic maintenance, and efficient equipment acquisition and management. The main objective of this thesis is to identify processes and success factors that are necessary for improved maintenance performance. By conducting a case study and by performing a literature review, the following has been studied: 1) how companies within the automotive industry work with maintenance and maintenance strategies, 2) implementation of maintenance strategies, and 3) new acquisition and spare parts management for maintenance. The results show that basic maintenance concepts and related terms are well defined in the literature.

 This thesis is based upon the assumption that in Swedish school today it is a wide gap regarding the information flow when pupils are switching school. This was one of the reasons Skolverket published a report clearly stating that this is the case. The purpose of this thesis is to examine and describe how teachers are working in a teacher team at transitions to see and understand what their work may mean individually, in a group and to the school as an organisation. The questions at issue is to see how the teachers cooperate during transitions and how they notice students in need of extra support and students level of knowledge during transitions. The two last questions at issue is first to see how teachers approach parent?s expectations on the school and the teachers, secondly it is to examine what implications their work will have on the school.

 This report will describe a project between two students from Karlstad University and Markus Norström from Hovercraft solutions. The project aim was to develop a cabin for the hovercraft 380TD. The project was divided into two sub parts; one concerning the design of the cabin and one concerning the engineering. Throughout this rapport you can follow the engineering part of the project. The project has followed a systematic product development process resulting in optimized results for material selection and engineering solutions.

Four different kinds of filter-materials with reactive surfaces have been studied concerning their capacity to absorb heavy metals in leachate from a municipal waste deposit. The heavy metals studied were: lead, cadmium, copper, mercury, chromium, nickel and zinc. The leachate contains high levels of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and has a high pH-value along with a high buffer capacity. These characteristics of the leachate make it difficult to remove pollutants and require efficient filters. The filters that were examined in the report are blast-furnace slag with CaO, sand covered with iron oxides, olivine and nepheline.

The purpose of this study is to investigate five teachers? opinions on the work with individualization with focus on above-average pupils. I have issued four questions based on the purpose of this study: - How do these teachers define the theoretical concepts of individualization and above-average pupils? - How do the teachers reason about the concept of individualization with focus on the above-average pupils? - How do the teachers reason regarding the work with individualization in the Swedish language? - Do these teachers consider that there are difficulties to individualize the work so that it will challenge above-average pupils?The method used to conduct this study was a semi-structured qualitative interview with five teachers in primary school. The theory and the theoretical concepts this study is based on is: what defines the above- average pupils, the zone of proximal development, the concept of individualization and motivation and the importance of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities.The study shows that the theoretical concept of above-average pupils is hard to define and it shows a difference between how the teachers choose to define it.

The purpose of this essay is to further the understanding of contemporary management theory by conducting an analogy-study of the source to many of the terms today used in knowledge-intensive companies. The way a football club deals with knowledge work differs from how a conventional company deals with it. However, many of the terms, such as teamwork and coaching, are shared by the two types of organization. By using the analogy-method we hope to create a wider understanding for the shared concepts. We have used a hermeneutic perspective throughout the essay, which first and foremost means that we focus on understanding and explaining social phenomenons.

Automatic trimmerhead is an examination project for making an automatic trimmerhead for grass trimmers with the user and functionality in focus. Our perception is that a happy user is a user who can pick up his or her trimmer, use it and put it back to its place when the job is done. It should not be necessary to interrupt work and perform maintenance on the machine just to make it work as promised.The project has been made in collaboration with the company Husqvarna, which is one of the biggest actors dealing with garden machinery on the market. Together we determined the project goal, ?To invent, construct and test a brand new concept for how an automatic trimmerhead can look and function?.At this day there are several different automatic trimmerheads on the market, both semi and fully automatic.

This master?s paper first presents some of the principal theories and concepts developed by the poverty researchers Rowntree, Titmuss, Townsend, Sen and Lister. These theoretical frameworks are then related to two documents from the EU and Sweden concerning combating poverty and social exclusion, bearing on the establishment of the ?Year 2010 against Poverty?. Finally, I discuss the value in practice of these theories and policy documents, as regards reducing poverty in Europe.It has become clear in this investigation that the theories and concepts from earlier research are still relevant to the formulation of contemporary policy programmes, and that earlier research helps us to avoid old traps in fighting poverty.

The use of Power Line Communication, PLC, as a communication solution for Automated Meter Reading, AMR, is popular by utilities in Sweden and other parts of the world due to demands of accurate and fast meter reading. However the use of the electrical grid as a communication medium is complex and sometimes problematic. This report handles some of the issues and problems that are important to understand when using the grid as a communications medium. Focus is mainly on investigating high frequency distortion in the Kristianstad power grid own by C4energi caused by a frequency converter. Measurements on site are done to investigate signal damping in the grid, different configurations for the frequency converter and signal strength of the PLC-system.

The use of Power Line Communication, PLC, as a communication solution for Automated Meter Reading, AMR, is popular by utilities in Sweden and other parts of the world due to demands of accurate and fast meter reading. However the use of the electrical grid as a communication medium is complex and sometimes problematic. This report handles some of the issues and problems that are important to understand when using the grid as a communications medium. Focus is mainly on investigating high frequency distortion in the Kristianstad power grid own by C4energi caused by a frequency converter. Measurements on site are done to investigate signal damping in the grid, different configurations for the frequency converter and signal strength of the PLC-system.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine the discourses about Malmö public library that can be identified in several documents published by the library, articles, and various WebPages. Furthermore, our intention is to study the relation between the library?s identity, image and profile. The questions posed in the study are: Which identity discourses are Malmö public library giving expression for? What kind of conflicts between these discourses can we find? How is the identity, image and profile of the library in relation to one another? How does Malmö public library profile and market itself as a non-profit organization? Our theoretical and methodological building ground is in the discourse analytical field, with Enesto Laclau?s and Chantal Mouffe?s theories about discourse and society, as a starting-point.

The aim of this study is to describe how nature is portrayed in swedish poet and critic Aase Berg?s two earliest poetry collections, Hos rådjur (1997) and Mörk materia (1999), and how it relates to notions of humanity, culture and civilisation. The concept of ?nature? is problematized in a short survey of how it has been used by and critizised in ecocritical literary theory, which is used as the main theoretical framework for this survey, with an emphasis on selected theoretical concepts by Donna Haraway. As a methodological starting point, ?nature? is tentatively defined as ?that which does not let itself be subsumed under the human, culture or civilisation?, and this definition is contrasted with how the concepts are handled in the texts.The investigation shows that the relationship of nature to the human is a fundamental theme that provides a structure for both poetry collections.

This paper explains the basis for impartial games and the classicgame Nim. Nim is complicated by a modular Muller twist and thesolution for this game is described by a simple theorem. The modularMuller twist means that at the end of each move the player selects a kand the number of sticks the next player leaves in the pile, where thedraw is made, must be congruent with k modulo m. The number m isfixed throughout the game..

This essay criticizes common theories within the three traditional perspectives, conflict management, conflict resolution and conflict transformation, for not being able to explain and/or generate solutions to the problems of fundamentalism and religious terrorism in a satisfying manner. This essay is trying to synthesize an alternative analytical framework that better can explaining these phenomena and generate potential solutions. The frameworks ontological ground is laid out using different readings of Foucault, thereby seeing the subject as formed by discourses, material processes and institutions. Fundamentalism and terrorism are seen as a violent resistance to repressed subjectivity, but the form of resistance depends on the discursive and non discursive surroundings. This gives rise to different forms of resistance; the production of discourses and founding of groups and the entry of marginalized people in these groups.

Should libraries first and foremost be a source of free informationwhere the citizens can find whatever information they want, or dothe librarians have a responsibility for what kind of works theypresent to people on their shelves? A wild debate broke out inSwedish media in September 2012, after the artistic leader ofKulturhuset in Stockholm; Behrang Miri decided to weed out allthe Tintin albums from the children´s library Tiotretton. Hewanted to start a debate on stereotypes in children´s fiction, andwhat damage they do to children who face them. The purpose ofthe thesis is to carry out a discourse analysis of this media debate,and to identify the different views that are expressed on thedemocratic mission of the libraries, what media they shouldpresent. The method and theory is based on the discourse theory ofErnesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and their concepts are used toarrange the analysis around certain themes that build up twodifferent discourses; ?Freedom of information discourse? and the?Weeding out discourse?.The two main questions are: What views of the public librariesselection of works are expressed in the Tintin debate in Tiotretton,and how do the views relate to each other? What concepts arespecific for the debate, and what meanings do they get in thesedifferent views?In the concluding chapter I discuss which consequences theseopposing opinions can have for the future selection processes ofthe library..