After the deregulation of the Swedish pharmacy market customers can be lost due to stock-outs. Optimization of pharmacy inventory levels has thus become increasingly important. To minimize inventory costs while considering the cost of shortages the latter must be estimated. However, the shortage cost is very difficult to compute. Thus, the aim of this paper is to estimate the pharmacy-specific shortage cost parameter and its relation to other inventory costs.

The objective of this thesis was to develop a method for the planning of road upgrading at Holmen Skog, a Swedish forest company. A critical issue for creating such plans is to identify roads that are suitable to upgrade to a standard that can handle heavy traffic during spring thaw, since spring thaw is a bottle neck for transporting timber. The method was tested in a case study at a district. The work consisted of two parts. The first was to retrieve and prepare geographical data for the roads.

These studies are done in behalf of Saab AB AVITRONICS in Järfälla in the form of a thesis atthe Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.The task was to examine the parameters that plays a role in the construction of modern radomesoperating in broadband applications.This was interesting for Saab to get an indication of which way they should go at the newdevelopment of radomes for the next generation of equipment for electronic warfare.After a thorough analysis of the influencing parameters, a optimization application was made toget a automated way to get a radome design by specifying data on the radome size, airloads,materials, etc.This is to minimise the time of the laborious work that radome development.inply.This was solved by letting ANSYS calculate the strength of the radome structure and MATLABcalculate electromagnetic data and cost models of different sizes and materials.All these parameters woven together with the optimization tool modeFrontier picks data from therespective program and perform an optimization algorithm and then iterate a step and sends thisdata to calculation programs for the new input data. In the end, we have received a convergedpoint with our optimal solution.For the presumptions and limitations for which applied for this thesis, the result was prettyintuitive. That is to say that the smaller radome - the less materal is needed and lowermanufacturing costs results in the cheapest solution possible. The reality is not so simple. Whereyou have to take more of the electrical details such as the effect on the transmitter as a majorfactor..

The problems around and the planning of wood flow is some of the most complex issues in the forest-sector. The experience and overview of the single employees is crucial for the possibility of correct tactical and economical decision-making. The increasing demand of savings and shorter reaction-times with greater flexibility in the wood-supply-chain, makes solutions and aids for improved effectiveness in the work and processes according to wood-flow urgent. Holmen Skog is starting to develop a new forest-road-management-system. The system will facilitate the work according to construction, improvements and updating the standard of roads.

This study investigated the performance and cost of scarification with a tractormounted excavator. Due to variations in terrain conditions the performance variedbetween 0.08 and 0.11 ha/E15h and, with a machine cost of 366 SEK/h, the cost ofscarification varied between 3 330 and 4 750 SEK/ha..

Scana-Booforge is a Swedish company which specialize in heat treatment of various metal. The treatments take place in quenching ovens, where fans are used to circulate the hot air. The fans used today do not have a satisfactory lifespan. This thesis aims to develop a new design of the fans for the quenching ovens, and the goal is that the new fans will bring cost savings for Scana-Booforge.The design development process started with mapping out the environment in which the fans operate, and with analysis of the existing fan structure and damages, in order to establish the cause of failure and of short durability. The performance of the fan were also established at this stage.

The purpose of this essay is to identify costs for providing First-line and Second-line support, and then allocate these cost to different goods and services (cost objects) being supported. The thesis also intends to improve the overall cost awareness in IT settings..

Ever since it was first introduced in an article in the Journal of Finance 1952, Harry Markowitz? mean - variance model for portfolio selection has become one of the best known models in finance. The model was one of the first in the world to deal with portfolio optimization mathematically and have directly or indirectly inspired the rest of the world to develop new portfolio optimization methods. Although the model is one of the greatest contributions to modern portfolio theory, critics claim that it may have practical difficulties. Partly because the Markowitz model is based on various assumptions which do not necessarily coincide with the reality.

NorFor is a cooperative project between the consulting organisations owned by the farmers in the Nordic countries ? Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. The project started in 2001 and the outcome, the system for ration calculation NorFor Plan and the model for evaluating the ration NorFor Evaluation, was completed in 2006. Along with NorFor Plan economical optimization are available and according to literature, the optimization will generate a 2 öre lower feed cost per kg milk, and thereby improve the profit for the farmer. The use of NorFor Plan in Sweden for feed optimization during spring 2008 has been very small. In this study eight herds in the middle of Sweden fed half the herd according to the classical system used in Sweden and the other half according to NorFor Plan system.

The structure and performance of grocery distribution in Sweden has changed profoundly since the second world war. Increasing access and usage of the private car, in combination with an accommodating town planning has enhanced the exploitation of scale economies within distribution firms. There is, however, some ambiguity concerning the overall efficiency of the distribution system when the costs associated with travelling and purchasing performed by households are treated as an integrated part of the total distribution cost function. The purpose of this master thesis is to develop the foundation of a spatial optimisation model, which defines the most efficient distribution system. The underlying idea is that the optimal localisation and size of grocery stores is a function of economies of scale within the firms weighed against distributions costs within the households, such as transportation costs.

This master thesis studies how much the cycle time, i.e. the time it takes for an industrial robot to perform a given task, can be reduced if an extra degree of freedom (DOF) is added to the robot system. The extra DOF consists of a linear track, which is supposed to be used in an optimal way. The problem has been studied using simulations in the robot simulation tool RobotStudio. To be able to run an optimization in Matlab, with the RobotStudio simulation cycle time as the object function, communication between Matlab and RobotStudio has been set up with an interface written in Visual Basic.

The aim of this study was to develop a load prognosis model for Uppsala district heating system to be used as a tool for heat production optimization. The methodwas to build three models for the different customer types; housing, industry andoffices and then scale them for the total system using data from Uppsala districtheating system. The heat load consists of two parts, one that is temperaturedependent and one that is dependent of the social behavior of the customers. Thetemperature part was modelled with an ARX model using an outdoor temperatureprognosis as input signal. The social behavior part was modelled using the mean ofthe social behavior from some days before and additionally by distinguishing betweenweekdays and weekends.

In this report focus is put on the combustion process at a cement plant. Combustion is the heart of the cement making process and absolutely crucial to have under full control and well optimized. The fuel is put into the process through a burner pipe and this burner pipe is modified to reach a more efficient combustion. The primary target is to enable burning of heterogeneous alternative fuels and increase the production level. Other positive effects from this type of optimization is lowered specific fuel consumption and lowered CO2 emissions. A redundant burner is chosen for the project and overall the project steps are the following: 1. Installing a Jet air nozzle ring in a way so it can move both axially and radially due to temperature changes. 2.

Calculations are an important part of planning around a construction project. From concept to completion of the project calculation is a tool to try to predict the actual cost. During the production stage in particular, deviations occur which makes the actual cost different from the calculations.This thesis is done in collaboration with JM Residential Stockholm. The study includes a cost follow-up in which a comparison was made between the calculated production cost and actual cost for the five projects. The aim of the study was to observe the most common reasons that a project deviates from the calculated production cost and then summing these causes in a number of categories.

Does goodwill affect the cost of capital? Goodwill is an asset which is characterized by much uncertainty regarding both what it is and how much it is really worth. Based on economic theory about information risk and principal-agent problems as well as theory regarding the cost of capital we test for the hypothesis that debt and equity investors perceive goodwill as something risky and hence demand compensation for taking on this extra risk. The proxies used for the cost of capital are cost of debt, beta and the EP-ratio. On a general level we find that increasing the level of goodwill seems to result in higher cost of capital as represented by the three proxies.