AbstractTitle:The Impact of Management Control Systems on the Purchaser Function - A study of Scania and Sandvik Authors: Mohammad Reza Akhbari and Johanna Sullivan Svensson Published: 2011 Keywords: Management control, purchasing function, impact, control, control instruments, Key Performance Indicators, measurement, communication and organizational structure. Background and problem formulation: In order for a company?s business idea or vision to be fulfilled, the management of a company needs assistance from various means to intentionally affect the operation in the desired direction. Management control concerns activities of both financial and non-financial character in order to implement the strategy of a company and to reach profitability. Since the purchaser function is responsible of spending 50 percent of a company?s total revenue, the function has an optimal starting point to be a key actor in the shaping and execution of a company?s strategic plan.

AbstractOutsourcing is a business strategy that has developed over the last 40 years. Outsourcing means to let another company do some activity within the company, for example production.The thesis for this paper is: How is outsourcing used in a manufacturing company today and how is the resource efficiency affected by it? The research is divided into two parts, a theoretical part and an empirical part. The theoretical part consists of a study of literature. The works in this study is books, text books, bachelor thesis paper and scientific articles.

Examensarbetet är utfört på Volvo Construction Equipment Components AB i Eskilstuna. Där tillverkas transmissioner och axlar till hjullastare och ramstyrda dumprar. Uppgiften har varit att ge förslag på en layout med bästa potentiella monteringsupplägg på transmissionsmonteringen, baserat på prognostiserad volym år 2006. Stationsmontering är det rådande produktionsupplägget. Det faktum att monteringstiden är lång och att det förekommer dolt montage gör det lätt att glömma detaljer.

This thesis was conducted at Linköping University and SAAB Aerostructures, Linköping, and focuses on the automation of flexible fixturing in machining applications. At Linköping University a project called "Koofix" is conducted with support from Strategiska stiftelsen and several manufacturing industries including SAAB Aerostructures. The purpose of this project is to develop a more cost-effective, flexible, technique for fixation of workpieces during processing and assembly.Fixtures are an important part during the machining process, especially if you process the parts with high accuracy. Today a large number of fixtures are used at SAAB and they would prefer to reduce the number of fixtures by using flexible fixtures instead. SAAB uses one fixture for each article and this result in a high fixture cost and it also takes time to design and construct a new fixture.There are several advantages with using a flexible fixture such as that you can process workpieces with different length, height and thickness in the same fixture.

The use of bio energy in Sweden has increased during the last few years and with every passing year, bio energy produces 3-4 TWh´s more energy than the previous year. The increase in the use of bio energy makes it an interesting prospect for forest companies to produce bio energy from the forest. Sveaskog has a fairly extensive bio energy programme, mainly in southern and middle Sweden. Their activity regarding bio energy in northern Sweden has been very restrictive or even non-existent. Because of this, during the winter of 2003-2004, Sveaskog initiated a number of degree projects with the purpose of looking at the use of bio energy in northern Sweden.

Undersökningen äger rum på ett fastighetsbolag som vi har valt att kalla X AB och som harca 350 anställda. På två av X AB:s kontor har vi genomfört kvalitativa forskningsintervjuer med totalt åtta medarbetare. Syftet med vår studie är att undersöka hur medarbetarepå fö-retaget X AB upplever förändringen fråntraditionella medar-betarsamtal till agila medarbetarsamtaloch hur denna föränd-ring har påverkat den lärande organisationen.Med agila med-arbetarsamtalmenar vi situationsanpassade samtal som sker ofta, regelbundet och som är individanpassade.Undersökningen grundar sig i teoretiska utgångspunkter som bland annat belyser lärande och utveckling i relation till dia-log, relationen mellan medarbetare, ansvar, feedback och den lärande organisationen. Studien grundar sig även på teorier om arbetsmetoden Lean, eftersom Toyota och Lean manufacturing är föregångare till den agila arbetsmetoden. Resultatet av vår undersökning visar att övergången från trad-itionella medarbetarsamtal till agila medarbetarsamtal på X AB inte kommunicerats ut tillräckligt på alla avdelningar, vil-ket lett till att vissa avdelningar inte fått med sig alla medarbe-tare i förändringsprocessen och i de agila samtalen.

In early January 2010 the authors participated in a meeting with the chief engineer for a company in which a central part is manufacturing of printed circuit boards (PCB). At this meeting it emerged that the machinery and production methods have changed substantially since the early 1990's. The spreadsheet for preliminary production time calculations by the company is today based on conditions from almost 20 years ago. The company has over the years been trying to adjust the spreadsheet template. The result of these adjustments has filled it with historical residue, something which makes the template difficult and time consuming when the primary user tries to handle it.The purpose of this study was to help the company increase its accuracy in the representation of the production times for the different PCB-based products by developing a new costing model based on an already existing but inadequate spreadsheet template. The company also expressed the wish that the new costing model would be less time consuming to work with.The methods used to achieve the goal are interviewing, participatory observations and meetings with relevant persons. The data obtained were analyzed using the theory on PCB production and visualization of data.

Sweden is one of five nations in the world manufacturing fighter aircrafts. Highly advanced technology is needed in order to develop a fighter aircraft. When developing advanced technology, new applications, other than those initially intended occur, spin-off. Some of Sweden?s largest companies are spin-offs from the fighter aircraft industry.

Examensarbete i Ekonomistyrning, 30hp, Ekonomihögskolan vid LinnéuniversitetetTitel: Kalkylutveckling i tillverkningsindustrin ? en fallstudie hos HordaGruppen ABUnder 1980-talet uppmärksammades kalkylmodellens roll som ekonomiskt styrverktyg. Denna uppmärksamhet ledde till omfattande studier av hur kalkylmodeller kunde utvecklas för att lättare klara av förändringar i företags inre och yttre förutsättningar. Kalkylmodellers utformning påverkas av ett stort antal faktorer som t.ex. strategi, kontext och användning.

Denna rapport är resultatet av ett examensarbete utfört vid Institutionen för industriell och ekonomisk utveckling vid Linköpings universitet på uppdrag av konsultbolaget Sustainia AB. Lean produktion, ofta benämnt Lean, har det senaste decenniet blivit en allt mer attraktiv produktionsfilosofi för att minska kostnader och öka kundnöjdhet genom förbättrad leveransservice och effektivare flöde. Ett flertal författare har påpekat att införandet av Lean direkt kan förbättra ett företags miljöprestanda, främst till följd av det minskade slöseri som Lean avser ge upphov till. Vidare finns studier som visar att vissa möjligheter till förbättringar och kostnadsbesparingar riskerar att gå oupptäckta om verksamheten ses ur ett strikt Lean-perspektiv. Med ett miljösynsätt finns dock chans att dessa blir upptäckta.

 This study was conducted in autumn 2008 on the Company AB, which is currently in a growth phase. The company manufactures hydraulic systems for the heavy vehicle industry and has annual sales of approximately 250 MSEK with 165 employees.The rapid growth and unchanged planning is the starting point for this report. It all began in 2005 when the company received an unusually large order. During this period, the first priority was to satisfy customers and all other focus was disregarded. This has primarily resulted in a messy production and long throughput times.

During the middle of the 18th century the development of Toyota Production System, TPS, started in order to streamline the processes. TPS was based on the principles of assembly line production but unlike previous performers Toyota let the manufacturing be constantly affected by demand. At the end of the 18th century TPS was described by Womack and Jones in the book "The machine that changed the world - the story of lean producion" where TPS got the name lean. The principles behind lean is to maximize customer value and eliminate waste which means making products and services more valuable to the customer. 1Lean was for a long time a philosophy and an approach limited to industries and production based companies.

In order to suggest improvements for the logistics of STARKA, we felt that we had to analyze all the activities which were related to STARKA's logistic processes. Our primary analysis consisted of a rough but comprehensive description of different functions in the company, and the relationship between them. This was performed by following a typical order through the company to see which functions were affected by the order.Since we needed a more thorough view of the company, we decided to analyze the different products STARKA currently has on the market, focusing on economic data such as turn-over, profit, profit margin, deficiency cost and cost of warehousing. We also analyzed the company's choice of manufacturing processes, organization, warehousing processes, strengths and weaknesses.These analyses gave us a clear understanding of the company and its processes. STARKA is a small, function oriented company with a wide range of products.

Business unit Cylinder at ASSA AB in Eskilstuna are having problem with frictions in their production process. Changes are occurring and older products along with machineries are phased out and transferred to low-cost countries. This opens up possibilities to at a larger extend customize physical flows after production flows. The authors where given the task to analyze the production and find problem areas to improve and to give suggestion on how Business unit Cylinder can work to optimize their production flow.The aim of the thesis work is to come up with suggestions on how to reduce the lead time in production and how the tied up capital can be reduced. In more detail the task included to find problem areas that are counteracting an effective flow, give solutions on new flows for the production of the cylinder core, give suggestions for new stock points for the production and how the production shall be managed and controlled.During the last twelve months ASSA AB has sold over 700 different types of cylinder cores, and the product range is very wide.

In early January 2010 the authors participated in a meeting with the chief engineer for a company in which a central part is manufacturing of printed circuit boards (PCB). At this meeting it emerged that the machinery and production methods have changed substantially since the early 1990's. The spreadsheet for preliminary production time calculations by the company is today based on conditions from almost 20 years ago. The company has over the years been trying to adjust the spreadsheet template. The result of these adjustments has filled it with historical residue, something which makes the template difficult and time consuming when the primary user tries to handle it.The purpose of this study was to help the company increase its accuracy in the representation of the production times for the different PCB-based products by developing a new costing model based on an already existing but inadequate spreadsheet template. The company also expressed the wish that the new costing model would be less time consuming to work with.The methods used to achieve the goal are interviewing, participatory observations and meetings with relevant persons. The data obtained were analyzed using the theory on PCB production and visualization of data.