Evaluating and choosing suppliers based on price alone, has traditionally been the dominant strategy for supplier selection within the purchasing function. With the origin of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)-concept in the early 1990s, a new philosophy dawned that promoted the importance of knowing the effects of supplier performance on the buying firm?s internal costs. Since then, scholars have been arguing the case of TCO as a viable model for making purchasing decisions and conducting supplier evaluation. Still, after two decades little is known about its penetration and impact on the practices of buying corporations, leaving the questions of which costs are included in the purchasing organisations? decisions unanswered, and even more importantly why certain costs are considered and others not.

The Telecom industry is facing a paradigm shift, where the industry is converging with Internet technologies and the market is becoming more sophisticated. This results in more demanding customers, and the need for offering more content and services with a focus on usability for the end-users. The operators are starting to loose both their strong position and revenue in the Telecom industry, due to new technology and the fact that other actors are starting to enter the market, offering new content and services. In the end, the operators have two choices, to become bit-pipe providers, and only focusing on network management, or keeping the control over their networks. The latter would mean that they block other actors who are taking parts of their revenue, e.g.

Detta projekt undersöker en praktisk lösning av virtualisering i Ubuntu-server med kvm och virt-manager för användning i en moln- eller Network-as-a-service-miljö. Projektet inkluderar även en jämförelse mellan webbservermjukvaran NginX och Apache2 och en jämförelse mellan videokonferensmjukvaran BigBlueButton och OpenMeetings genom att mäta CPU, Minnes och Nätverksbelastning till de virtuella servrarna vid 1 till 20 uppkopplingar från en klientmaskin.Utifrån projektets resultat rekommenderas Apache2 som webbserver då installationen är enklare och skillnaden i resursanvädning är försummbar och Openmeetings som videokonferesserver då detta alternativ är det mer kompletta..

This study aims to examine how professionals in the field of foster care works with recruitments, assessment and education of family homes for unaccompanied children. The intention is to find out in case there are specific needs that justify specific approach to ensure that the child's best interests are indicative and satisfied. The survey was conducted based on a qualitative method and empirical data gathered through semi-structured interviews with employees in the social services. The result shows that there is a need for more and specific education for families receiving unaccompanied children. It is motivated by the needs and conditions that are often common for this group.

The trends in trade have been changing in the last few years. To offer a good product with agood price is not enough today, it?s also required that businesses create a good relationshipwith their customers and then do their best in maintaining it. It is now even more brandscompeting in the market, which indicates how a good relationship between the parties can bean important competitive advantage and also a significant variable.The goal and purpose of the study is to investigate and analyze the factors that influence thatthe supplier, in the sporting goods industry, is seen as a good supplier on the basis of theretailer's point of view. Then we want, from different sized companies, analyze and study howthey work with the key properties in creating a good customer relationship and hencecustomer satisfaction.

The purpose of this study is to improve the understanding of the dynamics behind Chinese-Western buyer-supplier relationships. The study takes on a partially inductive approach by commencing with exploratory in-depth interviews. The main body of the study consists of a cross-sectional survey. Data has been collected through an on-line questionnaire. The theoretical review consists of industrial relationships with specific accounts on the role of adaptation, trust and commitment; a stream of literature in cross-cultural relationships deriving from Hofstede?s culturalist legacy with specific reference to Chinese-Western relationships, including studies on relationship bonding, and the role of guanxi.

At the moment in central Täby there are small district heating network operated by Fortum Heat. The distribution network has an annual heat demand of about 70 GWh, which is supported by the network's two plants, Galten and Farmen. Täby as a region is rapidly growing and there are grand plans to develop the area. Estimated market potential for a future district heating expansion in Täby is very high and as early as in 2007 Täby decided to invest in a large-scale expansion. In autumn 2009 Täby did a procurement process, known as the ?Täby initiative?, to find a partner that could implement those expansion plans. To secure a cheap basic production the partner also need to build a power plant at Hagby recycling center. Despite high interest during initial state of the process, only one procurement offer were received and Täby suspended the contract in March the following year.

New technology makes it possible to remotely measure all consumers in a power network onan hourly basis and store the values in a database.This thesis work describes the conversion process between automatic meter reading systemMActor and calculation software Xpower.Then the possible differences between calculations of power networks using load curves incombination with a yearly estimate of consumption and calculations using hourly measuredvalues is examined.The result of the comparison shows that, for the power network under inspection, nosignificant difference could be noticed. This does not mean that calculations using hourlymeasured values would be unnecessary. I believe that in a near future calculations using hourmeasurements will be the primary choice for many power companies to whom technology isavailable.Also some basic calculations of fundamental power network parameters, such as power factorand loses, are presented using hourly measured distribution transformers in combinations withits hourly measured loads.The report is written in Swedish.

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).

The purpose of this study is to analyse how a distribution and sale-network for quality softwood lumber should be designed to fit sawmilling companies? business concepts, and at the same time satisfy customer needs regarding delivery time and quality aspects. This thesis work is a case study based on a sawmilling and retail company in Sweden. AB Karl Hedin is a private owned sawmilling company with 500 employees. The company?s turnover is 1500 million SEK, it includes 4 sawmills, 16 builders merchants stores and a packaging company.

Jönköping Energi AB (JEAB) is a local energy supplier for the county of Jönköping. JEAB also maintain the local Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). They have recently installed GPON in a portion of their network and have connected it to the MAN via an Extreme switch.However JEAB would prefer to use Cisco equipment instead of Extreme since the MAN comprises of Cisco hardware. They require a solution to connect GPON to the MAN with a recently purchased line card (Cisco 7600 ES20) which can be installed in a Cisco 6500 Catalyst switch. There is also a possible solution with an Alcatel-Lucent 7450 ESS-1 switch.

Att koppla samman nätverk över geografiskt olika platser har blivit allt vanligare i dagens samhälle. Rapporten kommer belysa olika WAN-lösningar för att göra detta möjligt. De olika lösningar som kommer belysas i denna rapport är att hyra egen fiber, lager2-länk, MPLS och även VPN. Det kommer göras jämförelser mellan dessa lösningar när det gäller kostnad, säkerhet, hastighet och tillförlitlighet. Detta har gjorts med vetenskapliga artiklar och intervjuer men rapporten innefattar även en praktisk tillämpling i form av ett experiment..

Studies of networks, fields and of communicative circulations complement each other. This master thesis is a biographical study of an author and journalist, Gustaf Montgomery GM, his network in Sweden of the early 19th century, and a study of his authorship and literary career. The starting-point of the study is GM:s change of field from the conservative to the liberal in 1832. The aim is to give explanations to this change and to describe how the change in turn effected the network. The method used is critical of sources.

With the advance in computer and network technologies, multimedia systems and Internet applications are becoming more popular. As broadband network is prevailing, more clients are able to watch streaming videos or to play multimedia data over the Internet in real-time. Consequently, there is an increasing demand in the Internet for streaming video systems. As the run-time environment of such applications tends to be dynamic, it is imperative to handle transient overloads effectively. The goal of this work is to develop an algorithm that would provide a robust and controlled behavior of the video system so that important data is delivered on time to the video clients.

VARN A network multiplayer 2D action game written in Java. All games that support any form of play across networks is in one way or another affected by the delay, or "ping", that occurs from the time it takes for information to travel over the wires. Not only does it take time, it varies depending on how far away the connected partner is and the current status of the network you are on. Through the years a lot of different methods have been developed to combat these delays. I have reviewed some of these methods and implemented a synchronization system in Java meant to be used in online action multiplayer games..