During the last decades the importance of IT has increased for businesses all over the world. It has transferred from only being used in administrative purposes to become more integrated to the core business. Due to the financial crisis in 2009 and increasing globalization, IT is facing the challenge of lower costs and increased efficiency. This requires IT-departments to embrace new strategies in order to fulfill these new tougher demands.Lean is a business development concept that aims to lower costs through more effective processes by removing all activities that does not create any value from the end customer?s perspective.

Background: The standard of living should be the same for everyone, whether the apartment is placed in an old or new building. The residential properties that were built from 1965 until 1974 is now beginning to become old and in need of restoration. The financial crisis during the nineties contributed to the lack of maintenance on the buildings in Sweden. As the public buildings gets older more and more defects occurs. The coordination and maintenance will therefore have a more significant role in the housing company ?s work.The increasing interest about how old a building can be, attract much attention.

In the year 2010 a transition will take place here in Sweden from the present rules how to dimension buildings in to the common rules with have been developed in Europe, the Eurocodes. Eurocode is the term for a collection standard that contains calculation rules in how to dimension constructions and buildings. They are developed by the European standardize committee.The purpose with this examination work is to get an insight of what changes this will contribute to, and how it will affect the dimensioning. Are there going to be any differences in the dimension you finally chose?To investigate these possible differences two constructions will be calculated first in the present Swedish rules, and then in the coming eurocodes.One of these two constructions will be build completely in steel, while the other will be build completely in concrete.

Societal expectations of responsible corporate conduct are currently a fact. It is manifested ina corporate need for limiting and managing external effects, such as environmental impact.An environmental management system is a tool for organizations to structure theirenvironmental work and increase their efficiency. Managing the corporate operations toaccommodate to environmental objectives requires an organizational understanding of theobjectives as well as the procedures. A condition for a successful implementation is the coworkers´ willingness to participate and collaborate.A study made on the co-workers attitude towards the ISO 9000 standard (i.e. qualitymanagement system) reveals that the earlier positive findings are not completely true.

The use of thin and attractive models to promote companies' products is widespread among marketers. This is true even for companies whose products have little or no association with beauty or body weight. As the proportion of overweight people continues to grow in many developed countries the ideals used by marketers to attract customers strays further away from the actual attributes of the customers themselves. What is little understood is what effect overweight has on the efficiency of the product promoter. Some limited research has studied how the efficiency of the product promoters in printed advertisements is affected by the existence of congruence between the product promoter and the product itself.

This examination paper is a lead in the educational program Industrial Management at Jönköping University. The paper itself contains an analysis of the warehouse organisation and its efficiency at the furniture company Voice AB in Torsvik, just south of Jönköping, Sweden. The report also contains propositions to raise the level of efficiency in the company warehouse and warehouse management.In the investigation of the warehouse a number of possible improvements were found. Examples are lack of a system for labelling shelves and racks, lack of an efficient location system and development possibilities in work routines. For the empirical investigation both qualitative and quantitative methods ware used.

This paper examines if trading suspensions on Nasdaq OMX Nordic - Stockholm work as a contributing factor in creating a secure trading. This has been made through an event study and examination of abnormal returns. Our results for plus tick suspensions indicate that suspensions fulfill their purpose in creating a more secure trading since the trend of abnormal return we observe prior to a suspension is disrupted. Thus, the suspension is warranted. The conclusion is that the market cannot be completely safe; as the law and practice is structured today an abnormal return is inevitable.

For a long time Lean has been a well-known concept among manufacturers. Theinterest of understanding Lean and the ability to implement it is common amongcompanies. The concept of Lean, used in the right way, can help companies to reducetheir lead times, their complexity and increase the efficiency of the working processes(Hyer och Wemmerlöv, 2002). Unfortunately the work towards increased efficiencyhas primarily been focused on manufacturing and plant work, resulting in that Leanhas been adjusted to these areas. The conclusion of this is that companies don´tprioritize to improve processes such as administrative ones.

The project was performed at SiemensIndustry Drive Technologies with theobjective to provide actual values forthe energy savings potential withinSiemens scope of practice.In Sweden the electrical drives standfor about 30 % of the total electricityconsumption and about 60 % of theelectricity consumption within theindustry. During the pre-study phaseelectrical drives with pump applicationswere identified as large energy users.Because of this a case study at one ofSiemens customers, Stora Enso Fors wasperformed. The system that was evaluatedduring the case study was a throttledsystem with a centrifugal pump forpumping pulp.The results yielded that a saving ofover 50 % could be achieved by replacingthe throttle valve with a variable speeddrive, a frequency converter. Thepayback period was two years and twomonths and the present value for thetotal life cycle cost of the variablespeed system was 662.566 SEK lower thanfor the throttled system. As aconsequence, Stora Enso Fors is advisedto invest in a frequency converter forregulation of the system.The general conclusion is that a focuson system efficiency is the mostimportant factor in energy efficiencyprojects and that the system regulationmethod has a large impact on the overallsystem losses and hence its efficiency.Energy efficiency potential forthrottled systems with centrifugal pumpsis large and significant economicalsavings can be made through investmentswith short payback time..

Storm water is defined as runoff from precipitation such as rain or snow. It is collected in sewage disposal systems and since it mainly originates from urban areas it can contain high levels of heavy metals, nutrients and oil etc. Polluted storm water is currently treated by different methods such as wet ponds, constructed wetlands and filter strips. This study investigates these methods, which in earlier studies have shown to give varying results regarding their treatment efficiency.This thesis has been written on commission of SWECO VIAK and was aimed at studying those parameters that may affect the treatment efficiency of nutrients and heavy metals in storm water treatment facilities (STF:s). Through literature studies the dominating treatment processes in ponds and wetlands were examined.

The productiontime in the construction industry contains of many different participants which will take part in different events. When there is so many people working with the same project it is easy tosee one self just as a part of the game. The consequence of this is that they don?t see themselves as important participants whos knowledge, opinions and experience can be useful in the whole production process. This might lead to that they feel neglected and the consequence of that will be lackof motivation.

Efficiency has become an important objective for many providers of welfare services. Among Swedish schools, both private and public, increased administrative demands seemingly influence operations, and affect teachers negatively through perceived stress. Simultaneously, Swedish students scored an all-time low in the latest PISA survey, and are now performing below the OECD-average in science, mathematics and reading. A central administrative task in the Swedish elementary school is the parent-teacher conference, which is an important activity in supporting the development of the student's knowledge and social skills. Lean is a well-established operations framework, which has proven successful in order to improve process efficiency.

Previous research in the field of consumer marketing has confirmed the positive effects of divergence on advertising efficiency. Despite the coherent evidence, some industries lag in the adoption of these findings, one of which is the Swedish real estate market. Divergence has not been elaborately investigated within said context and this paper addresses the need of actionable insights for housing advertising. Starting with the proven success of housing firm Fantastic Frank who work with detail photos in contrast to the common wide angle, this paper examines theoretical implications of detail photos' characteristics. Besides being divergent, detail photos are also ambiguous which renders access to effects related to visual perception.

Because society?s demand for quality, efficiency at low cost is constantly increasing, companies are increasingly choosing to invest new methods to achieve these points. Those who manage to find ways to improve their processes are often the companies that have the greatest chance of becoming a winning player in the market. BIM is a new method that can reduce the internal costs while increasing communications between different parties. However there is disagreement about what BIM is and its purpose.

Quality assurance of construction projects and create effective ways of working, is intoday's pressed position, major objectives for building contractor companies. This thesis is an attempt to see if it is possible to achieve these goals with the new modern tool iPad.The author of this thesis has during the latter half of his one year practice work in Uppsala for the Swedish building construction company NCC Construction Sverige AB, conducted a study on the possibility of using the iPad on an construction site. This has been done with active field studies in which applications have been tested and also the supervisors receptive. The usability of the iPad has always been in focus since it is important that the applications are easy to use and easy to learn.The results of the work, as presented in this report, points at opportunities in efficiency if the iPad is introduced and used on construction site. There are many useful applications for the iPad, and with a system that can handle the synchronization between the iPad and the computer, the workflow will be streamlined significantly..