This study was the foundation for an evaluation of an employment project in Sweden. The project offers occupations in carpentry as well as kitchen work for people with psychiatric disorders, substance abuse and other social difficulties. This studies purpose was to analyze the projects significance to its participants and also to distinguish weather the project influences the participant?s life in a professional or private way. The methodological tool was five qualitative interviews with the participants and three qualitative interviews with the employees.

The market is developing and a growing competition increases pressure on companies to maintain their competitive advantage. Working with cost savings is a way to enhance earnings in a short term but also in a longer perspective. Volvo Powertrain Production Köping has an overall goal; to reduce costs by nine percentages in three years. To achieve the goal, Volvo Powertrain Production Köping works with World Class Manufacturing where the Department of Processing Technology constitutes an important part.Volvo Powertrain Production Köping lacks a standard for how savings within the metal cutting tool area are to be calculated. This makes it difficult to control and monitor their business outcome but it also causes difficulties in controlling the tool suppliers? outcome.

Demands on businesses are constantly increasing and the competition in the market-place is becoming ever tougher. To gain the long-term confidence of customers, not only the best businesses, but also the best supply chains are required.Volvo Cars is experiencing a changing competitive situation and their retailers are having trouble stocking the right spare parts. Shorter product life cycles and the growth of Volvo?s product program result in an increase in the number of spare parts to be stocked. In order to adapt to market trends and meet customer demands, Volvo has developed the LDC model, establishing a number of regional warehouses in strategic locations in Sweden, de-signed to supply spare parts to the regions? retailers through so-called Vendor-Managed In-ventory (VMI).The purpose of the study is to examine Volvo personbilar Sverige?s (VPS) motivation for a modified customer-service strategy through LDC.

Every observation method has its advantages and disadvantages and a well-adopted method gives more reliable results. Factors affecting the choice of the most appropriate methods for recording foraging behaviours include species, group size, environment, seasons and age. The focus for this study was to determine which method is most appropriate for studying the foraging behaviour of a troop of 89 olive baboons (Papio anubis) living in a riverine forest by the Southern Ewaso Ng'iro River by Lale'enok Resource Centre in Kenya. To determine this, a literature study was carried out to compare methods from monkeys and apes. I found instantaneous sampling was the most common method with intervals of 5 minutes in most cited studies.

Abstract ? ?Aggregate complaints in banks MIS?Date:                       June 8th 2012Level:                      Master thesis in Business Administration, 15 ECTSInstitution:                School of Sustainable development of society and technology, Mälardalen UniversityAuthors:                  Abdulla Ahmed Ibrahim         Alexis AnderssonTitle:                       Aggregate complaints in MIS ? A case study of Nordea BankTutor:                      Carl G ThunmanKeywords:               Aggregate, complaint, dissatisfaction, content analysis, Nordea, MIS.Purpose:                  The paper aims to develop a model of how Nordea Bank can monitor customer dissatisfaction through aggregated dissatisfaction analysis. Furthermore, the study aims to identify improvement proposals in Nordea based on the developed model and conducted interviews.Method:                  This thesis consists of qualitative interviews. Personnel at the local office in Västerås has been interviewed as well as Nordea?s customer ombudsmen, former office employee at Nordea, data analyst, head of customer inquiries, Professor of database technology and also a researcher in language technology.

The largest project at the AICG lab at Linköping University, Cognitive models for virtual characters, focuses on creating an agent architecture for intelligent, virtual characters. The goal is to create an agent that acts naturally and gives a realistic user experience. The purpose of this thesis is to develop and implement an appropriate learning model that fits the existing agent architecture using an agile project methodology. The model developed can be seen as an online unsupervised reinforcement learning model that enhances experiences through reward. The model is based on Maes model where new effects are created depending on whether the agent is fulfilling its goals or not.The model we have developed is based on constant monitoring of the system.

This is a product development project which has developed a prototype in order to facilitate for people using mobility devices when they want to buy a larger quantity of groceries. The prototype is a shopping cart composed with the upper part of a walker.Today there are many different types of mobility devices used by elderly and people with physical impairment. According to Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap (MSB) are accidental falls the most common cause of accidents in Sweden.This project has been using Computer Aided Design (CAD) as a tool to create a visual image of the prototype. The advantage of this is to modify the functionality and performance of the prototype on the computer before the modification takes place in the real model. Using human manikins, the CAD model was rendered in natural surroundings to get as true a picture as possible.

Abstract: Hightech EU/Japan ? a research about European hightech companies? interest in establishing business on the Japanese market with the help from a middleman. Subject: Marketing. Problem: The Japanese market is highly developed and therefore interesting for foreign companies. The Japanese culture is very different from the European and this together with the long distance creates problems for European hightech companies to compete on the Japanese market.

In 1994 a new Forestry Act was accepted in Sweden. One of the aims of the law is to raise consideration forpreservation of biodiversity. Since the new law got accepted and some time has passed, there now lie someinterest in examining whether the law has been effective towards its purpose. Methods suitable for analysishave been examined during this study. The content of this pilot study is based around five parameters whichcan be used to validate the effects of the new law.

Urban planning is not only a matter of architectural trends; it is first and foremost political. This thesis seeks to understand the links between political ideas and visions for the city and the physical structure of the city. The study aims to construct a model to help understand these links, a helpful tool in analysing a city, focusing on the one hand at the physical structure of what I call "The City as a Welfare Provider" and on the other hand at "The City as a Growth Engine". It also sets out to test this model in an empirical study of Stockholm and the soon-to-be built district of Norra Station in the same city.The analysis shows that Stockholm has ambitions to be a welfare provider to its citizens, but have also adopted to a discourse of interurban competition which stresses the importance for the city to enhance economical growth. What is interesting is that the physical structures promoted in the planning documents of Stockholm are nearly exclusively those associated with the model of "The City as a Growth Engine"..

Traditions are something that is very important to many people, Christmas is usually no exception. Christmas tree, Christmas ham, herring and candle lights are just as important as the advent candlestick. The advent candlestick help you get the Christmas feeling during the countdown. In this report the work with a new advent candlestick concept can be followed step by step.A lot of information was needed in the beginning. By doing some research, surveys and interviews the ground was established for further work.

There are an increasing number of people suffering from depression and depressed mood. Concurrently important benefits have been noticed from the effects of massage, effects that can be assumed to restore individual?s health with depression and depressed mood. The aim of the study was to examine the importance of gentle massage in connection with depression and depressed mood. The research was based on scientific studies that were applied through the databases Cinahl, elin@Kristianstad, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, PubMed and the journal Vård i Norden as well as by manual searches.

This master thesis deals with steel girders subjected to patch loading caused by concentrated moments. There exist no good methods to calculate by hand the ultimate resistance for this load case. In ?tunnplåtshandboken?, (Handbook for sheet metal, which is published by SSAB), one calculation method is presented. It?s however fairly difficult to use, because of many calculation steps and many graphs.

To increase the knowledge about the growth of hazel (Corylus avellana)and size distribution of the shoots, circumference and stem diameter wasmeasured in a total of 54 clones in two areas in Östergötland. Further, thewidth of growth rings was determined for separate years. The diameter ofthe stems was measured both out from the centre of the stem andperpendicular to the first measure. The stems showed only a weaktendency to have an oval shape (with the longest side outwards from thecentre). The growth model did not improve when the degree of sunlightof clones was taken into the account.

 Date: 2008-10-06Level: Bachelor thesis within Information Technology and business economics, 15p, EIK021Authors: Anna Karlsson, akn05009@student.mdh.seLena-Maria Lindström, llm05002@student.mdh.seMagnus Wretlund, mvd05001@student.seTutor: Marie Mörndal Title: Managing IT-incidents, a case study at ICAs IT department                            OperationsKeywords: IT-incident management, IT-incident management process, IT-incident, ITIL, CCTA Problem: An organization can benefit by having an established management process of handling IT-incidents. But how can this be achieved? Are there step-by-step procedures? What´s included in the management process of IT-incidents? Is the size of the organization relevant to which model is to be chosen? Can the work of the writers of this essay result in a recommendation of a specific model for IT-incident management? These questions lead to the following essay question; How are IT-incidents managed?Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and discuss how IT incidents can be managed.Method: The writers of this essay have performed a case study at ICA, a Swedish food retail company. Eleven interviews with nine different persons have been carried out. The interviews are analyzed in the chapter called Resultat och analys.Conclusion: Our conclusion is that there are both similarities and differences in Dept.