The main purpose of this Master?s thesis is to do a benchmarking study of the marketing activities at the public library of Valdemarsvik. The purpose is also to describe and get a deeper understanding of benchmarking as a method for improving library activity. Four major problem areas are addressed: How can one use benchmarking as a tool to achieve change? How can one learn with benchmarking? What similarities and differences are there between benchmarking and other similar methods for competence development? Is benchmarking better than other similar methods for competence development? The empirical approach was qualitative and the method chosen was action research.

Modelica is a multi-domain and equation-based modeling language. Modelica is based on object-oriented principles and non-causal modeling. The language is constructed to facilitate reuse and decompose models. The models and the modellibrary can modified to design a new nonlinear components.Object-oriented modeling is an excellent way to analyze and study large complex heterogeneous physical systems. The object-oriented modeling approach build on reusing and decomposition of models and non-causal modeling.Modeling physical systems often leads to a DAE system with index 2 or 3.

This report is a description of a developed educational simulator over rail vehicles and its components. The simulator is a hardware-based prototype over a door system on rail vehi- cles. System specialists and technicians will use the prototype. The Simulator should give the user a technical demonstration on how components work in a door system. The proto- type consists of motor, switch, relay and sensor.

Due to higher standards of living around the world, greater industries and larger infrastructures causes an increase of the global energy consumption. This harvest of energy puts a great stress on the global environment. With this development, it becomes increasingly important to utilize energy resources in the best possible way.Fans are components that are often used in the industry and in households. A common problem is that the fan is oversized. An oversized fan causes an excessive flow, which has to be adjusted in order to achieve the correct flow.

BAE Systems Hägglunds has a long history of producing high performance terrain tracked vehicles (mostly for military applications), and they are now aiming at developing a tracked forwarder with similar techniques.The forwarder will be of series hybrid type where a diesel engine via a generator will power the motors (one for each drive wheel). Thanks to individually controlled motors and the gentle rubber tracks, this forwarder is calculated to have a considerably higher average speed in the terrain and to be more gentle to the soil. The forwarder with a weight of 11 metric tons and a load capacity of 15 metric tons is specified to have an average working speed of 7-10 km/h, a top speed in terrain of 15 km/h and a top speed on roads of 40 km/h.This master?s thesis aims at developing a conceptual design of the forwarder?s drive module which includes electric motor, gear unit, brake and drive wheel.To investigate if the requirements can be fulfilled a study of the dimensioning loading scenarios has been carried out. The resulting needs regarding the torque has been considered in order to determine the required gear ratios for different motor options.

The purpose of this study is to examine how four educators in two different departments at two different preschools in Stockholm, selects children's literature in preschool and how literature is used in the activities and how much influence children have in the choice of literature. Based on qualitative interviews as a method we have interviewed pedagogues to get answers to our questions. We will also interview some children to find out how involved they are in the purchase of literature on the departments we examined. We consider the social cultural perspective to be a well rounded starting point for our survey, because the theory gives us the opportunity to study how the interaction and meetings between educators and children develop for each reading encounter. And through the analysis a thorough display between educators and children towards literature will be shown.

The research within the management control systems-field and more specifically performance management has been rather shallow and not much has happened the last decades besides the balanced scorecard. The researchers see a lack of studies focusing on the effects of an integrated performance management system and also how it affects the different hierarchical levels and the tasks to perform.We decided to perform an essay with case study-characteristics by looking at both the strategic and tactical level at Volvo Group, or more specifically Group Trucks. We performed three different interviews, one at the group level and two at the division level. The aim was to see what effect an integrated performance management system had on the tactical level (i.e. the divisions).Our findings and corresponding analysis suggested that Volvo was a rather centralized company in order to get the performance management system to work by enabling a ?weekly control?.

The aim of this thesis is to explain what actions Sweden and the international communities have been taking in terms of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in order to realize the Programme of Action from the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo 1994. In a theoretical perspective, donor countries and multilateral organizations are seen as interacting actors involved in global development cooperation. Through applying a human rights approach I will show shortages in terms of supplies to contraception, international agreement on the issue of safe abortions and a new era that comes with new rules for aid and development cooperation. In addition, for human rights to be realized there is the feature of accountability. Without accountability, SRHR cannot be fully respected, guaranteed and protected.

Vid affärssystembyten väljs ibland standardsystem framför egenutvecklade system. En orsak är att egenutvecklade system är dyra och komplicerade att bygga. Flera företag tycker också att det är smidigare att implementera standardsystem då dessa är utformade som en paketlösning där samtliga moduler är integrerade.Ett problem för företag är att välja "rätt" standardsystem. Ett arbetsmål i denna uppsats är att ta reda på i hur stor utsträckning företag använder sig av en metod i anskaffningsprocessen. Huvudfokus är att ta reda på vad företag tycker är viktigast att anpassa - verksamhet eller system? Ett annat delmål är att titta på hur företagskulturen förändras vid ett standardsysteminförande.I undersökningen görs sex företagsintervjuer hos företag som alla har anskaffat standardsystem.

This thesis aims to answer the following questions: What type of vocabulary is used in the humanities? What does this implicate when it comes to indexing in the humanities? How do humanities scholars seek information and what type of information do they need? What consequences does this have when it comes to the development of humanities databases? How is the MLA International Bibliography organized? How does its indexing system ? CIFT ? work? How does the MLA International Bibliography correspond with the needs of the humanities scholar? The study shows that the type of vocabulary used in the humanities differs significantly from that used in the sciences. Therefore, information retrieval is often said to be problematic in the humanities when compared to the sciences. This is, however, not completely true. If consideration is taken to the different type of vocabulary used in the humanities, subject access proves to be more straightforward than has been generally recognized.

This project was conducted during the spring semester 2013 at mechanical engineering program at University Halmstad. The project was conducted in collaboration with MPQ Consulting in Halmstad. MPQ Consulting is a newly established company looking to take step into the product development world. The company has already had ideas and existing products. One of the ideas is to construct and design a form of beach games whose rules are based on the volleyball rules.

This master thesis has been carried out at Scania R&D at the department for Powertrain Control System development during the winter of 2010/2011. In the thesis the writer examine and evaluate the existing method for collecting information from the tests carried out during the development of the Powertrain Control Systems software. It also contains suggestions for how a new method that enhance the validation elements could look like.The master thesis uses Vicentes theories of the ecological approach and theories of how knowledge sharing of tacit and technical information works within an organization and between the organization and its customers. First a workplace analysis at Scania R&D is carried out to see how Powertrain Control Systems work and how they test their software. Second a control task analysis, where the aims decided on after the interviews, is compared to the existing method.

I detta examensarbete har ett system utvecklats som samplar och digitaliserar en högfrekvent analog signal och lagrar de samplade värdena i ett minne. Systemet genererar en analog utsignal genom att antingen direkt omvandla de samplade värdena eller genom att använda sampels lagrade i minnet som källa för omvandlingen. Det går då att använda systemet både som en passiv länk eller som en signalkälla.En triggfunktion har implementerats för att på ett effektivt sätt ge möjlighet att fylla minnet med för användaren intressanta delar av en signal. Arbetet går även ut på att undersöka om ett FPGA-kort av typen Stratix II DSP Development Kit är ett lämpligt utvecklingskort för att ta fram en prototyp av systemet. Kortet har undersökts med avseende på olika begränsningar för det utvecklade systemet, till exempel vilka frekvenser en insignal kan samplas i.Ett annat användningsområdet för systemet är möjligheten att få alla sampels lagrade på kortet presenterat i en textfil på en ansluten PC.

The parent-student-teacher conference presumes school responsibility of the development of the student. Teacher, student and parents are supposed to talk freely and in confidence, the conference should lead to a forward looking and long term plan. The parent-student-teacher conference should presume equality amongst the parties. The intention of this paper is to illuminate how the conference can be a way to clarify the process of learning. I intend to do this by showing the practice of four teachers, by making conclusions from their experiences they have made in their practice.

The structural rationalization of rural firms in Sweden has led to many new creative ways of developing companies. The agriculture sector is characterized by the need of capital in form of buildings, labor and inventory. The rationalization process has led to free capacity in rural firms when new technology make buildings and inventory not longer necessary for the production process. To get a better cost coverage this free capacity can be used to start-up new business areas that help the rural firm to growth.The study aims to identify factors that motives entrepreneurs in rural firms to develop new business areas. The purpose is also to analyze driving forces that lies behind development of rural firms and the forces that support or not support development in rural firms.The study is built upon five cases that all can be categorized as firms with different size and orientation.