This report describes the development of a web site for co-workers on leave of absence at Volvo Cars Engine AB and graduated students at Volvo Upper Secondary School in Skövde. The aim of the web site is to be a complement to existing communication channels in the promotion of the contact between the target group and the company. The work was divided into two parts; the first consisting of a preliminary study used to identify the information which the target group finds absent in their absence from their place of work/school, and the second part consisting of the development of a proposition of content layout and web site design. The finished proposition was presented along with a couple of alternatives for the technical implementation. The information department at Volvo Cars Engine AB in consultation with Volvo Cars IT will carry on the implementation, administration and further development of the proposed solutions..

In today?s society a large focus is put on energy systems and how our energy systems are built up. In order to make sure that we in the future still can enjoy the living standards that we are used to today, Sweden and EU have made a number of decisions on making our energy system more energy efficient and consequently reduce the usage of energy resources. By 2020 the European Union should have reduced its energy consumption by 20 % compared to 1990?s level, and by 2050, 50%.

Background: The construction industry is Sweden?s single most important industry branch with a significant influence on Sweden?s wealth. The political restrictions that once controlled the industry are today almost gone. This combined with an unbalanced supply and demand situation on the Swedish constructions market, caused by urbanisation, has led to increased pressure on the Swedish construction companies who now are forced to find new methods in their struggle to contain or increase their competitive advantage. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to survey: which strategic variables are of great importance in today?s Swedish construction industry with focus on the four main actors, JM, NCC, PEAB and Skanska.

Intranets can streamline workflow processes, improve communication and add value to the employees of an organization. Companies that don?t take advantage of the potential in their intranet is a common phenomenon. In connection with a migration project dealing with a switch of content management system it turned out that SAS Technical Services lacked clear objectives and strategies for the use of their intranet. Thereby they didn?t make the most of the possibilities an intranet brings.The work with this thesis began with collecting the experiences the company could take with them from the migration project.

This essay is written within my education for Technical Officer in the Swedish armed forces. The essay describes the alternative fuels that the Swedish armed forces can make use of if the supply of fossil fuels is insecure. The alternative fuels that are described and compared are; Synthetic diesel, Organic diesel, Methanol and Ethanol. The essay describes the process of producing the alternatives, the need for modification and the economics for each alternative. The alternatives are compared and assessed for their ability to secure the supply of fuel to the Swedish Armed Forces.

In a complex and turbulent world, several companies begin to realize the value of information as a strategic resource and try to find strategies to manage this. This master thesis aims to describe the information management at Axis Communications AB. Axis is a fast growing company and due to this they have not been able to manage the flow of information whitin the company. To find out how the information was managed at this time we made a survey and employee interviews at three Axis business units. By analyzing the surveys and interviews we found several problems.

The project in question is a joint effort between students at Karlstad University and Marcus Norström at the company Hovercraft solutions. The project is divided into two parts, one focusing on the purely technical aspects of engineering the product and one focusing on the design aspects of the product development. The project described in this report is the design of the product. The assignment from Hovercraft solutions is regarding design engineering of a cabin for the hovercraft 380TD from the manufacturer Griffon hovercraft. The product lacks a cabin and none is offered from Griffon at the time being. 380TD is a relatively small hovercraft with a length of 6.8 metres and a width of 3.8 metres.The surface available for the cabin is not much different from the body of a car.Because of this, research has been focused primarily on car bodies.The product development process used in the project is following a systematic approach.From a chosen concept, the project was finalized with a CAD-modell as well as a detailed prototype.The weight target of 80 kg was reached and the ergonomic aspects were considered developing the sight field, roof- and entrance height.    .

The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a special unit for patients who is in the need for emergency life-sustaining measures and every patient has complex medical- technical equipment. The experiences of a critical illness and the needs of critical care are experienced in different ways. The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences from patients in the ICU and how this experience has an influence on the patients. The method was a study of literature with a qualitative inception based on eight scientific articles and the analysis of content has been inspired by Graneheim and Lundman (2003). The result of the study is presented by four categories: to loose the ability to make themselves understood, to be forced to adjust to the environment of caring, to have the lack of connection with reality and to be in an intensive care environment, The results showed that patients in the ICU are affected by the attitude from the staff, the equipment around them as well as the sounds and lights in the environment there.

Syftet är att konstruera en handelsstrategi baserad på Contracts-For-Difference (CFD) för att utnyttja de möjliga samband som föreligger mellan oljepris och SEK/USD växlingskurs.Uppsatsen baseras på en induktiv ansats med kvantitativ metod. Slutsatser dras från utifrån de data som har bearbetats.Korrelationen mellan olja och valutan SEK/USD är starkt negativ. Funktionaliteten hos ?Moving Average? som indikator för trendskiften bedöms som relativt hög. Handelsstrategin som har konstruerats uppvisar positivt resultat efter fem års simulerad handel.

Navigating to different locations isn?t always easy. Imagine then how it is for people with a visual impairment to walk across the street or to get from one point to another. The Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired (SRF) has pointed out that today's society is not sufficiently accessible to people with visual impairment and there are improvements that need to get done. Technology is something that has evolved a lot this last decade and occurs today almost everywhere in our environment.In some areas, technology has facilitated people's daily life very much and we have therefore chosen to examine whether a combination of several technical functions integrated into the fictive artifact called Eyenavster can facilitate outdoor orientation and increase the accessibility for people with a visual impairment.Qualitative data collection methods have been used in this study by six interviews to answer our question.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

?Death in the pot.? The Fruit and Vegetable Preserving industry in East Scania during the 20th centuryA Company History.At the end of the twentieth century, only one of the six companies previously active in the Fruit and Vegetable Preserving Industry in East Scania survived as an independent company: Kiviks Musterier AB. Actual production remains at two sites only. The aim of this study is to determine the reasons for this development. The companies included in the investigation are AB Bjäre industrier, Gustaf Bong AB, Kiviks Musterier AB, AB Ruuthsbo konservindustrier, Th.

The project Easy Battery Handling - EBH has been carried out in our auspicial and completedfor Devantini Corporation, a development company in Halmstad with its main concern inenvironmental friendly innovations.EBH has solved one of many technical challenges in one of Devantini corporation?s largerprojects. This main project involves the development of an electric powered formula racingcar. The part of this car that involved EBH was the battery handling to guarantee safe andquick battery exchanges during pit-stops.The solution became an entire battery module, hanging on the side of the car on two spearspointing out from the car. The batteries are exchanged by a specially designed trolley that isinserted under the battery module.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

Värnamo Elnät owns and operates a ripple control system which is used to control loadsespecially when the grid is heavily loaded and for control of street lighting. This report aims atclarifying technical and economic aspects of the ripple control system?s future. The system wasinstalled from 1975 and onwards and its use was greater in those days when the controllableloads where greater then today, the current controllable load level is about 3 MW. The reporthighlights three different aspects of the ripple control system?s future ? retain the currentsystem, reinvest in a newer system or discontinue the system.In the report the author also discusses relevant connections to Smart Grids and future meteringsystems and tariffs.