<p>Companies<strong> </strong>that seek to venture into providing services in addition to providing products have many business issues to consider as there are many differences between providing service and product offerings.  One factor that needs to be considered in service offerings is the aspect of time, as services are offered for an extended period of time, creating a unique type of relationship between the customer and the service provider.  With product offerings, the point of sale is usually the end of the product provider and customer relationship.  The added time aspect in the service offering brings with it the issues of uncertainty as service contracts are made for a certain period of time in the future, where things are unknown.</p><p> </p><p>This thesis looked at types of uncertainties important to service offerings, especially in the manufacturing industry.  The uncertainties have an impact on how service offering contracts are constructed, as they can affect the profit and costs of the service provider. The three types of uncertainties that were examined were product malfunction uncertainty, service delivery uncertainty, and customer requirement uncertainty. Using these three types of uncertainty, mathematical models were constructed to represent the cost and revenue of different contract types. The different contract types were identified through a case study with a product manufacturer in Sweden.  Different probability distributions were selected to model the three types of uncertainty based on a literature review.  The mathematical models were then used to construct a software program, the uncertainty simulator tool, which service contract designers can use to model how uncertainties affect cost and revenue in their contracts.</p>

<p>“Industrial cluster” is one type of agglomeration and the concept has been increasingly used and recognized as an essential part of regional development strategies and thinking in recent years. However, there has <em>not</em> been an explicit collection-work devoted to exploring the <strong>Critical Success Factors</strong> (CSFs). So, this thesis aims to explore such CSFs based on literature review as well as illustrative case study.</p><p>The major finding of this thesis is exploration of 18 (possible) CSFs based on extensive literature review and grouping them into 5 success categories (see Table 3 for the full list of them). The contribution of each explored CSFs to the success of a typical cluster has been checked, in order to assure that each explored CSF is really functioning as a CSF. Then, SMIL as a real-life cluster with 25 years old in Linköping region of Sweden is used as an illustrative case study, in order to observe the literature-based explored CSFs in reality.</p><p>In addition, based on both literature review and illustrative case, a number of relations between CSFs have been identified. In particular, such relations can be described as; some CSFs may lead to creation of some other CSFs.</p><p>Illustrative case study shows that some of the literature-based explored CSFs are not observable in a real-life cluster, i.e. SMIL. The main reasons for such lack of the validity of some CSFs in SMIL cluster are mostly deal with the SMIL (association) as the node organizer of SMIL cluster. Such main reasons are; weak linkage between SMIL association and some of its actors, and/or being out of the scope of SMIL’s agenda and focus.</p><p>The other finding of this thesis is that; in terms of resource, network-based clusters with network activities (such as SMIL cluster) are richer in soft resources (such as pre and post existence of knowledge in the region) than hard ones (like infrastructural resources).</p><p>At the end, there are some recommendations for SMIL in order to improve its overall performance, by considering some possible CSFs.</p>

<p>Insurance companies and banks are of great importance to the economy, which is why their stability must be ensured. In order to prevent bankruptcies in the financial sector, these companies are subject to strict regulations, which set standards for risk management and the amount of reserve capital required. Such capital reserves act as safety buffers to protect the customers from extraordinary events. In the insurance industry, the reserve capital is referred to as the solvency margin.</p><p>Solvency II is new set of insurance regulations that aims to set a common standard regarding solvency capital and risk management for insurance companies within the European Union. The potential costs and benefits of the regulations are of importance not only to insurance companies but also to those firms that offer services and products to the insurance industry in the field of risk management. Solvency II is often compared to the Basel II accord for banks, which had a strong business case in the way that banks could significantly lower their reserve capital and use it for other purposes. The question is, however, whether insurance companies can expect similar benefits from Solvency II.</p><p>The purpose of this study is therefore to explain how the Solvency II regulations will affect risk management in the Swedish non-life insurance industry, and whether these changes can result in opportunities for insurance companies. This is achieved by studying the new regulations and conducting a number of interviews with insurance company representatives as well as industry experts. Four potential effects of Solvency II have been investigated: capital levels, insurance pricing, credit ratings and reinsurance.</p><p>The findings of the study indicate that no obvious benefits related to the potential effects above can be realised by complying with Solvency II. The future capital requirements will come close to those already enforced by supervisors today, resulting in a minor change that can go both ways. Neither credit ratings nor reinsurance covers seem to become notably affected by Solvency II. As for insurance pricing, an increasingly sophisticated risk-based allocation of the cost of solvency capital provides the most notable opportunity of Solvency II, but at present, no conclusions can be drawn regarding the effects of such changes. On the other hand, Solvency II will put pressure on improving systems to ensure the quality and traceability of data.</p><p>Thus, the actual changes in risk management practices are not expected to be substantial among Swedish non-life insurance companies, and it therefore seems unlikely that insurance companies would be willing to invest as heavily in reaching Solvency II compliance as banks have done in Basel II.</p>

<p>Through extensive research it has shown that today’s sail boat owners are very frustrated concerning the limited choice of engine alternatives offered by today’s market. Besides rising fuel-costs, environmental awareness is very important in today’s society. Hence it is vital to find alternative environmental-friendly motors and replace combustion-engines.</p><p> </p><p>Zilent Ocean is an extensive project within Development engineering program at Halmstad University. The Project aims at minimizing environmental impact on our seas through limiting the usage of combustion-engines in sail boats. Zilent Ocean’s major target is the development of a customer-oriented company offering electric conversion kits of combustion-engines to sail boats at very competitive market prices.</p><p> </p><p>The Project was carried out by converting the combustion-engine in a MAXI 77 sailing boat (7.7m length, 5 beds). The current diesel-engine installed in the boat was replaced with a new DC electrical engine together with the appropriate controller unit.</p><p> </p><p>The finished sail boat prototype will be evaluated under the summer of 2009. The sail boat contains unique solutions enabling a more cost-efficient system in comparison with today’s combustion-engines. The aim is to provide a complete electric conversion kit at a lower price than a new combustion-engine. Together with lower investment costs, minimal maintenance and running costs, electrical conversion from Zilent Ocean is bound to be the future, and the natural decision for many sailors in Scandinavia.</p>

<p>The typical residential building is located at the crossing of S. Centralgatan Street and Nedre Akargatan Street in the city of Gavle. It is a quadrangle building of six floors with a yard in the middle. There are 180 apartments of five types in total, and at the first floor there is a kindergarten. There is a District Heating in the building and heating recovery system ventilation which use heat exchanger to reheat.</p><p>Several solutions are used for reducing the heat loss. In the first step, the heat loss  and heat  in  has  been  calculated. There  are  several parameters  that involve the heat loss and heat in of whole building, so each parameter in the energy balance equation is extracted and calculated. And then the Energy Balance Sheet has been built. Among the heat loss part, the transmission is 1237MWh,  the  hot  tap  water  is  332MWh,  the  mechanical  ventilation  is 1041MWh, the natural ventilation is 325.7MWh.In the part of heat in, the DH is 1265.7MWh, the heat pump is 793MWh, the solar radiation is 562MWh, the internal heating is 315MWh.Later in the second step, after analyzing data of heat loss part, the improvements will be focused on the transmission and hot tap water parts because the heat loss in those two parts occupy the most. At the end of final step, the solutions have been discussed to optimize the heating system.</p><p>As conclusion, there are several suggested solutions. The total reduction of heat loss after adjustment is 163MWh, accounts 5.6% of originally heat loss. The  heat  loss  of  the  building  has  been  reduced  from  2935.7MWh  to 2772.7MWh.</p>

<p>Due to the global warming of the atmosphere it is now time to decrease the consumption of energy. One of the most important consumer is the commercial building area and especialy the supermarket. After a survey of the total consumption and a division into unit process it is possible to find some measures to decrease the global consumption of energy (in the lighting, cooling/freezing and space heating processes).</p>

<p>Vi har valt att skriva vårt Examensarbete inom inköpsorådet. Arbetet syftar till att undersöka inköpets betydelse för företagen och särskilt belysa tre frågeställningar. Vi har valt att fokusera på kommunala företag men vi har även med ett privat företag. Inköpets betydelse har ökat allt mer under de senaste decennierna, allt mer material köps in färdigt och skruvas ihop. Det finns stora pengar att tjäna på att ha ett effektivt inköp. Vi valde i vårt arbete att utföra en kvalitativ studie med induktiv ansats eftersom att det skulle ge oss en bättre bild över hur företagen arbetade i sin inköpsprocess. Vi valde därför att genomföra en fallstudie med intervjuer av fyra inköpschefer som material för vår studie. Det vi kan konstatera efter att ha tagit del av de intervjuade företagens motiv till att använda sig av outsourcing är att det framförallt var bristen på egen kompetens som saknades. Vi har även sett enligt vad vi förväntade oss att de kommunalägda företaget som tillämpar partnering anser sig själva lägga lite resurser på att underhålla sina relationer men att de nu mera har börjat eller ska börja underhålla dem mer. Detta är något som Lyson och Gillingham (2003) menar är en drivkraft hos företag som tillämpar partnering. Enligt Weele (2002) är IT högt prioriterat av många organisationer dock går själva införandet långsammare än vad en första anblick säger. Viljan finns till förändring men olika faktorer bromsar utvecklingen. Vi har också märkt att priset av tjänsten/produkten är den avgörande faktorn vid upphandlingar och inköp. Det finns flera intressanta aspekter att undersöka i framtida arbeten t ex hur outsourcing påverkar företagets totala kunskapsbank, ekonomiska situation och hur teknologiska samarbeten kommer att se ut i framtiden. Det vore också intressant att kvantifiera relationernas betydelse för företagen.</p> / <p>We have chosen to write our essay in the purchasing area. The paper aims to examine how outsourcing, relationships and technology partnerships works primarily in the public sector. We have also chosen a privet company as a reference. The importance of purchasing has grown over the past decades, a lot more material is now bought in ready to be mounted together into a finished product. Much money can therefore be gained by improving the work of the purchasing department. The aim of this paper is to investigate the importance of purchasing to companies and to see in what ways the companies work with purchasing differs from the theory. In this paper we have chosen to perform qualitative study with an inductive approach because this will give us a better image of how companies work with their purchasing process. Therefore we have chosen to perform a case study with the interviews of four purchasing managers as material for the study. The conclusion we have made after studying the companies motives to use outsourcing is foremost the lack of competence that made them outsource some of their activities. We have also seen as we expected that the public companies that apply partnering consider them self to add to little resources to maintain their relationship but they have now started to or begun adding more recourse to maintain them. This is something that Lyson and Gillingham (2003) implies is the driving force within companies that has implemented partnering. According to Van Weele (2002) IT is highly prioritized in many organizations, however the work with the implementation may take longer then what the it appears. The will to change exist within the companies but many factors slows down the development. We have also noticed that the price of the services/product is the main reason that makes companies purchases it. There is many interesting aspects to explore as subjects in future papers for example how outsourcing effects companies overall knowledge, economic situation and how technologic cooperation’s will be in the future.  It would also be interesting to quantify the importance of supplier relationships to companies.</p>

<p><strong><p>Environmental issues have been highly in focus for several years. With the development of EMS, many companies get environmental improvements through implementing EMS. Also, "green logistics" turns out to be a popular issue. But the combination of environment issues and logistics system is rarely found in the previous researches. Therefore, environment-oriented logistics system design becomes the topic described here.</p><p>The purpose of the thesis is to see potential of integrating environment issues into logistic system by literature review and case study. With the help of our supervisors, two Swedish companies Sandvik SMT and FLB Logistik become case companies in the thesis. The analysis is based on literature review about logistics and environment, the information from both companies‟ websites as well as face-to-face interviews.</p><p>In analysis part, how logistics systems and environmental issues interact with each other is illustrated firstly. A proposed model based on logistics system decision-making model is shown. SWOT analysis is used to explain the outcomes and challenges of implementing EMS in Sandvik SMT. At last, the conditions such as customer environmental requirement and the cost for using EMS are briefly described.</p><p>Based on the research, further study should begin with the collection of quantitative data about environmental performance from manufacturing companies, suppliers, as well as retailers. More recommendations are given in the conclusion part.</p></strong></p>

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to examine the current status and development of the private and state-owned Third-party Logistics (3PL) companies. In China, there are mainly two common kinds of ownerships, one is state ownership, and the other is private ownership. These two forms of ownerships have enormous influence in various industries. The state-owned company GREE and private company CHINATRANS are taken as the case study in this thesis. The management systems of these two companies are analyzed by interviewing their managers. Furthermore, an innovation assessment tool is used to examine the innovative performance for these two companies. The return on investment model is also used to compare on the financial problem. Based on the analysis of management, cost and innovation aspect in GREE and CHINATRANS, the pattern of different ownerships affecting 3PL companies is identified. The conclusions of this thesis are: The private Third-party Logistics companies have a more flexible management system than the state-owned Third-party Logistics companies. Moreover, the private Third-party Logistics companies have a good performance on cost management and human resource. The core-competitiveness for them shows in the grasp of the market. The state-owned Third-party Logistics companies have a strict management system; they have advantage of innovation management, especially for new technology development. Excellent service is their core competence. Nowadays, Chinese third-party logistics industry has a low ROI, but still has a large space for 3PL to improve. Through the case study of GREE and CHINATRANS, value-added services and low cost operation are effective approaches to increase ROI.</p>

<p>Sammanfattningen syftar till att ge en övergripande bild om vad arbetet handlar om, för att skapa en nyfikenhet till att läsa hela arbetet.</p><p>Studiens syfte var att analysera alternativa distributionssystem för petroleumprodukter från Gävle Hamn. Där vi har valt två slutdestinationer, norra Stockholmsregionen med Brista som ett alternativ och det andra alternativet är Västerås. De faktorer som vi har utgått från när vi har analyserat distributionssystemen är ekonomiska, miljömässiga och tekniska möjligheter.</p><p>Den metod som användes var kvalitativ och det empiriska materialet inhämtades genom intervjuer. I studien har nio respondenter intervjuats, vi anser att de personerna har varit relevanta för studiens syfte. Resultatet har analyserats med hjälp av tidigare forskning och teorier inom ämnet.</p><p>Resultatet visade att det skulle vara ekonomsikt, miljömässigt och tekniskt möjligt att starta upp petroleumtransporter till norra stockholmsområdet. Till Västerås fann vi inga belägg för att ett alternativ där båten först går till Gävle Hamn för att sedan lastas om till tåg skulle bli billigare eller bättre ur miljösynpunkt. Det fanns även tekniska aspekter som gjorde kapaciteten sämre till Västerås än till norra Stockholm. Därför anser vi att det nuvarande alternativet ska användas till dess att nya förutsättningar börjar gälla.</p>