This thesis describes possibilities for Metso Paper to lower their costs of spray pipes for their pulp wash press TRPE, with maintained good functionality and quality.Information that can be used by competitors has been censored in this version of the essay.To find solutions, alternative suppliers have been contacted and asked to quote. There has also been a new spray pipe designed. The manufacturing costs of the new design have been calculated.The thesis also contains a concept generation of an alternative product to the spray pipes in installations where a high pressure washer is used.To be able to ask other manufacturers of spray pipes to quote, a demand specification based on the currently used spray pipe was made. This was then sent to two alternative suppliers.An investigation of earlier used spray pipes, and the currently used, shows that the nozzles are a big part of the total costs of the spray pipes. To attempt to reduce the nozzles high cost an concept generation was made to find the best solution for a new design.There was a request that it should be possible to change the internal brushes in the spray pipe without cutting and welding.

The thesis handles the principal-agency problem between shareholders and the Chief Executive Officer. The purpose of the thesis was to examine the link between CEO compensation and corporate performance measured as a change in Market to Book ratio. Data was collected from corporate annual reports between the years 2000 ? 2008 and the study covers 39 Swedish companies from the Stockholm Stock Exchange Large Cap list. To examine whether there is a link between the CEO´s compensation and firm performance, we performed a regression analysis, and no significant relation is found.

The purpose of our study is to find out if insiders in Sweden generate abnormal earnings through insider trades. We want to pinpoint the cause for abnormal earnings by dividing transactions after company market value, size of the trade and type of insider. A quantitative approach using the market model have been used. We have conducted an event study over two short term event windows. We conclude that insiders in Sweden generate positive abnormal earnings for sales and negative for purchases in our ?long? event window.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to describe and analyse the origin and development of the library of Workers´ Educational Association in the community of Oskarström. This library is special because the organisation run it much longer than usual, until 1977, and to find an answer to why, we have the following questions: Why does the library of Workers´ Educational Association start their activity in Oskarström, and how does it develop, in relation to premises, librarians, financing, the stock of books and the numbers of books out on loan? What is the reason that the library in Oskarström is municipalized as late as 1977? The methods we use are hermeneutics and evaluation of the sources. The library is founded in 1914 and become important for the workers. Important sources of income are the subventions given by the state, municipality and other associations.

Energy efficiency is important both to reduce costs and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. Reducing costs will also help maintain business competitiveness.Scania in Södertälje is a company where the optimization of energy use is an ongoing and continual process. One area with potential to make energy and cost savings is the effectiveness of the ventilation systems in offices and industrial premises at Scania. During the summer months an increased demand for cooling occurs, leading to increased ventilation and a peak in district cooling system usage. Sorptive cooling is a technology where the supplied air is cooled by applying external heat.

People in today?s society are becoming more and more aware of how important it is to use energy as efficiently as possible. This is clearly noticeable by an increase in home produced heat with e.g. solar panels or heat pumps heating systems. These changing customer demands forces district heating technology to be redesigned, which is why there is an ongoing research regarding the next generation of district heating - low temperature district heating (LTDH).

This thesis aims to investigate the information effects of fair value accounting in Nordic real estate companies. As a consequence of the mandatory IFRS adoption in the European Union in 2005, listed Nordic companies are allowed to recognize investment property at fair value in accordance with IAS 40. Theory suggests that fair value accounting should lower information asymmetry. Therefore, this study aims to examine correlation between fair value accounting of investment property and information asymmetry on the stock market. To investigate this, we use bid-ask spread as a proxy for information asymmetry and examine Nordic real estate companies before and after the implementation of IFRS.

The purpose of our essay is to study the institutional-, demographic and accounting theoretical factors that influence an organisations actuarial commitment.The research was performed through a web based survey, with complimentary telephone interviews, directed to companies listed on Stockholm Stock Exchange A- and O-list on the 30 of November, 2003.Our data was analysed with a Median test, Kolomogorov-Smirnov test, T-test and a Mann-Whitney test. The purpose of the Mann-Whitney test was the low number of respondents that took part in the research. The Kolomogorov-Smirnov test was done to determine whether the population variances was equal or not. The data showed that organisations with a majority of female employees assume a lower salary increase, and a higher average age than other companies with a male majority. Only 2 of 11 hypothesis can be accepted as temporary truths but several other visible relations are indicated in our research, but can not be statistically proved.We think that the major problem with our is the time it was performed.

The life cycle of the anadromous Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) can span large geographic, political, and socio-economic boundaries. Management strategies and regulations that only concentrate on small spatial scales often overlook larger basin-wide problems, especially relating to post-spawn seaward migration. In this master thesis one entire migration cycle of wild adult Atlantic salmon in the unregulated northern Swedish river Vindelälven was monitored by radio-telemetry tracking during upstream spawning migration and downstream seaward migration back to the Baltic Sea. The effect of ladder passage variables (time to pass, total time in the ladder, passage day over the ladder) at a fish ladder downstream in the river Umeälven, as well as fish size, were evaluated to determine if differences in upstream migration distance in the river Vindelälven could be observed. Ladder passage variables did not affect migration distance, but size exhibited a negative relationship to migration distance.

The Smart Grid technology has during the last decade been established as a way to create a greater flexibility on the electricity grid that will be needed as the development moves towards an increased share of renewable primary energy sources in the electricity production. One part of the Smart Grid technology is the ability to shift loads in time, to adapt to either price or emissions, known as Demand Response. This project, which was conducted at KTH in collaboration with the consulting corporation Capgemini, examines the economic, environmental and social aspects of the Demand Response technology. In the project, three household products are used in a model that derives the potential savings in costs and emissions of CO2e. The results show that the actual savings measured in SEK are small, but that the savings measured in percent can be as high as 20 percent. Reduction of CO2e emissions is slightly lower.

Reporting harvested and forwarded volumes are important for the forest industry as it provides information of the size of the stock and facilitates logistics. Figures from Holmen Skog show low reporting frequency. The purpose of this study is to investigate the reason and find suggestions for improvement. A total of 17 machine operators were interviewed using a questionnaire combined with open questions. The results show that the majority of the machine operators find it simple to use the reporting system, although, some of them reports that it doesn?t always work as supposed to.

In today?s society Internet is evolving the tourism industry and it?s the pioneers that use this marketing channel to further their brands that?s that reap the benefits of early adoption. In this essay we research how well two kinds of ownership structures, private ownership and chain ownership, in the hotel market match up against each other in Internet presence and the steps they have taken to encourage guests too book via their websites. We determined that the hotel market in Karlstad was sufficient to study the different kinds of ownership structures as it?s small enough to see the competition between private ownership and chain ownership clearly instead of as normal in more densely populated cities where chain owned hotels dominates the marked due to sheer size. The scientific research consists of two types of methods.

The thesis presents an optimally designed kinematic structure for a new 6-DOF haptic devicebased on TAU configuration. The configuration of the TAU-2 proposed by Suleman Khan andKjell Andersson [1] was modified and its mobility was verified by using Grübler criterion tohave a 6 DOF. Analytical kinematic models for the inverse and forward kinematics weredeveloped for the haptic TAU configuration to determine a set of optimal design parameters.Kinematic performance indices such as volume of the workspace, kinematic isotropy and payload index, were defined based on the singular values of the Jacobian matrix. The Jacobianmatrix was scaled to homogenize the physical units. The Jacobian matrix dependent on theposition and orientation of the end-effector gives local isotropy and pay load index, so globaldesign indices were defined, which represent the performance of the mechanism in the wholeworkspace.

Corporate Social Responsibility has been defined as the responsibility towards stakeholders and the society in whole and the expression was founded in the 1950´s. Reporting in corporate social responsibility has been termed corporate social disclosure and has been divided into three areas: environment, ethics and human resources. The aim of this study is to explain variations in corporate social disclosure and the different media used by corporations to communicate these disclosures. A survey was conducted, which included all Swedish corporations listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, and all public-owned corporations. The results show that corporate characteristics such as size, industry and profitability can explain some of the variation in social disclosures and also have an effect on the extent and variation of the media used.

The aim of our master thesis is to study the way valuation of real estate is conducted by real estate companies. Furthermore we want to identify the factors that affect the relevance and reliability of the valuation. The reason for this is the introduction of IFRS, in 2005, and the application of the IAS 40 rules stating that real estate are to be recognized at fair value on the balance sheet. To do this we have performed a case study on 10 Swedish real estate compa-nies listed on the Stockholm stock exchange, OMX, Large Cap and Mid Cap list to see how the share value has performed in relation to the reported net asset value since 2005 and how they value their collection of properties. We also studied the assumptions made by real estate company analysts.