<p>Behandlingsassistenter och lärare på Lövsta skolhem, ett behandlingshem för ungdomar mellan 12-21 år, har i nuläget svårigheter att enas om hur skolgången ska bedrivas och finna en bra samarbetsform för skolundervisningen.</p><p>Syftet med studien är att belysa den framväxande organisationsutvecklingen på Lövsta skolhem och utveckla konkreta förslag för behandlingsassistenter och lärare att finna samarbetsformer och en gemensam målbild för de omhändertagna ungdomarnas skolgång.</p><p>Metoden är av kvalitativ karaktär vilket gjort det möjligt att i studien undersöka kontexten i organisationen och skapa en helhetsuppfattning.</p><p>Förslagen som presenteras för behandlings- och skolverksamheten är följande; struktur och kontinuerlighet i <em>KNESS- mötena</em>, enhetliga riktlinjer i arbetsutförandet, att medarbetarna följer de angivna rutinerna och att <em>den ledande funktionen </em>lyssnar och tar aktiv del av deras samlade kunskaper och idéer.</p><p> </p>

<p>Många företag upplever problem i multiprojektmiljöer som dagens projektmodeller oftast inte tar hänsyn till. Projektmodellerna är dessutom ofta anpassade för stora affärssystemprojekt vilka inte behöver vara tillämpbara för mindre projekt.</p><p>Det här arbetet syftar till att utreda och ta fram projektmetodik för hur projektarbete bör utföras på en typ av projektorganisation med en viss typ av förutsättningar. Studien är anpassad att gälla för en projektorganisation på ett konsultföretag som arbetar med införandeprojekt av affärssystem mot mindre företag.</p><p>Företaget som fallstudien beskriver är Medius AB som har en affärsidé att med bred kompetens leverera IT‐lösningar som förenklar och effektiviserar processer i organisationer. Företaget är under stark tillväxt vilket påverkar samtliga av företagets tre affärsområden. Den studerade projektorganisationen tillhör ett av dessa affärsområden som bland annat arbetar med införande och underhåll av affärssystem mot en byggkedja. Det som är speciellt i nuläget är att det bedrivs fler projekt parallellt än tidigare och företaget har ett behov att se över sin projektmetodik.</p><p>För att skapa en teoretisk plattform att utgå ifrån har två huvudområden studerats. Till att börja med har litteratur kring projektledningsmetoder och förändringsprojekt studerats. Därefter har en litteraturstudie kring affärssystem och införandeprojekt genomförts. Detta gav en samlad bild av hur projekt teoretiskt bör genomföras för ett affärssystemsinförande av detta slag.</p><p>För den empiriska insamlingen har forskningsmetodiken varit att delta i den dagliga verksamheten i så stor utsträckning som möjligt. Framförallt är det tre områden som ligger till grund för informationsinhämtningen vilka är intervjuer med projektledarna, deltagande i veckovisa projektledningsmöten samt studier av företagets befintliga dokumentation.</p><p>Studien resulterar i en framtagen projektmodell med rekommendation för hur projekt bör genomföras i den studerade organisationen. Den framtagna projektmodellen tar hänsyn till de givna förutsättningarna och beskriver projektprocessen, lämpliga mallar och dokument samt projektets roller. Ett särskilt fokus har lagts på att antalet parallella projekt är relativt stort vilket betyder att projekten verkar i en multiprojektomgivning vilket ger konsekvenser för samordning och kunskapsöverföring.</p><p>Slutligen diskuteras projektmodellens användbarhet i andra organisationer samt att metoden för att ta fram projektmodellen skulle kunna användas av andra liknande företag. Bidraget med studien är framförallt att den ger ett nytt perspektiv på hur projektledningsmetoder kan användas i fråga om införande mot mindre företag där andra pågående projekt ger stor en inverkan på projektgenomförandet.</p> / <p>Many companies are experiencing problems in multi‐project environments. Usually, today's project models do not take this into consideration and the models are often suited for large ERP projects.</p><p>This study aims at investigating and developing a project methodology for how projects should be carried out in this type of project organization. The study is designed to be applicable to project organizations in consulting companies that engage in introduction of ERP projects to smaller firms.</p><p>The company in focus is Medius AB with its business concept to deliver IT solutions that simplify and streamline the processes within an organization. The company is in a phase where it is expanding considerably which is affecting all of the company's three business units. The projects in focus for this study are one part of Medius´ organization that concerns the establishment and maintenance of an ERP system for a hardware retailer. Compared to the past, more projects are conducted in parallel and the project methodology Medius utilizes is in need of a review.</p><p>To create a theoretical platform to build upon, two main areas have been studied. Firstly, literature in project management techniques and change projects has been studied. Secondly, a literature review in ERP implementation project has been executed. This gave an overall view of how, projects in theory should be implemented.</p><p>In order to create an empirical basis for this study, the research methodology has been to participate in the daily activities as much as possible. In particular, data has been gathered through interviews with project managers, participation in weekly project meetings and studies of the existing documentation in the project organization.</p><p>This study results in a project model with recommendations for how projects should be implemented in the studied organization. The model describes the project process, appropriate templates and documents, and role descriptions. Due to the high numbers of active projects, the study has a particular focus on the multi‐project environment, project coordination and knowledge transfer.</p><p>Finally, this report discusses the usefulness of the model may have in other organizations and the method for developing the project model could be used by other organizations. The contribution of this study is primarily that is gives a new perspective on how project management techniques can be used for the introduction of ERP projects to smaller companies where the multi‐project environment gives a big impact on project implementation.</p>

This thesis deals with various information aspects of new product development (NPD). In total, the thesis consists of 6 research articles appended in full, and an introductory text that integrates and theorizes with and from these papers. The first paper is a review article examining the literature on and role of information in NPD. The main argument put forward here is that information processing can be understood in terms of three steps: acquiring, sharing, and using information. The second paper is a largescale survey that examines the relationship between market and entrepreneurial orien-tation and performance in NPD. A market orientation is to a large extent about acquiring, disseminating and using market information, while an entrepreneurial orientation partly is about ignoring such information, and instead trying to be innovative, proactive, and take risks. The results show that a market orientation and innovativeness are positively related to NPD performance, and that neither product nor environmental characteristics moderate these relationships. The third paper is also a survey, and investigates the extent to which management of external information is associated with innovation performance. The main findings are that scanning the technological sector of the environment was positively associated with innovation performance, while scanning customers, suppliers, and competitors proved to be negatively correlated with innovation performance. Crossfunctional integration in the form of collaboration as well as using information from the industry environment also proved to be positively related to innovation performance. The last three papers have a centre of gravity in “management of information &amp; environ-ment”, and not so much in new product development per se. Paper four describes and com-pares different information processing approaches (e.g. environmental scanning, marketing research) in order to identify their similarities and differences, but also their underlying con-cepts and the course of events they represent. The main conclusion is that differences exist primarily in terms of focus and scope. Paper five is a review and tentative integration of different perspectives in organization – environment research: the adaptive, the resource-dependence, the cognitive and the population-ecology perspective. The review identifies differences and similarities among these perspectives, suggests tentative conclusions on why the adaptive perspective is so frequently utilized at the expense of the other three, and suggests constructivism as a feasible avenue for combining and integrating these perspectives. Finally, the sixth and final paper deals with information use in the context of strategic decisionmaking. With a case study approach, the questions of why information is used, what kind of information is used, where it is obtained, and how it is obtained were addressed, and the results from this paper are mainly descriptive. The purpose of the introductory text is two-fold. In addition to providing integration of the appended papers, the main purpose is theory construction (i.e. elicitation of constructs and propositions). In the introduction, all six appended papers together with a new literature search and a new pilot case study are used to generate propositions about management of information, information sources, and the need for cross-functional integration in three different phases of the NPD process. In addition, suggestions regarding theoretical connections are made. The introduction text concludes with reflections, managerial implications, limitations, and future research. / <p>[Paper I] Frishammar, J. (2005). Managing Information in New Product Development: A Literature Review.International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management, 2(3): 259-275., [Paper II] Frishammar, J. and Hörte, S.Å. (2005). The Role of Market- and Entrepreneurial Orienta- tion for NPD Performance in Manufacturing Firms1. Short version presented at the 12th In- ternational product development management conference in Copenhagen, June 12-14, 2005. Full paper submitted to Research Policy., [Paper III] Frishammar, J. and Hörte, S.Å. (2005). Managing External Information in Manufacturing Firms: The Impact on Innovation Performance2. Journal of Product Innovation Manage- ment, 22(3): 251-266., [Paper IV] Frishammar, J. (2002). Characteristics in Information Processing Approaches. International Journal of Information Management, 22(2): 143-156., [Paper V] Frishammar, J. (2005). Organizational Environment Revisited: A Conceptual Review and Integration. Forthcoming inInternational Studies of Management &amp; Organization., [Paper VI] Frishammar, J. (2003). Information Use in Strategic Decision-making3. Management Deci- sion, 41(4): 318-326.</p>

Information technology (IT) is often assumed to be a prerequisite for the modern and developed organization, even though IT projects are described as problematic in practice. Starting with this paradox and using a narrative method, this study focuses on how, through their stories, employees of an organization ascribe different meanings to IT. The study, which entailed following an IT project at an insurance company, illustrates how the employees of the organization actively ascribe various and contradictory meanings to IT. On the one hand, preference is given to one grand narrative of IT as a tool in the service of the organization. This grand narrative ascribes the meaning of achieving management, control, and change, which is supposed to help the organization on its way toward a more successful future. Great responsibility is transferred to the technology for attaining the desired impact in the organization, which can backfire, especially against project management as they are hit with demands to fulfill the expectations for IT. On the other hand, employees wrestle to control the project, which they describe as unwieldy and unmanageable. The desired management, control, and change are described as elusive. The IT project has in this way come to be developed in a field of tension between contradictory meanings, where problems and solutions are constructed over time. The employees thus become, to an extent, victims of the meanings they have reproduced, something that can be described as double-edged power. The employees who were the keenest advocates of IT are also those who have the greatest difficulty accepting the failure of the technology to live up to expectations. In parallel, the study illustrates the employees’ opportunities to actively engage themselves in storytelling that complement and challenge the dominating meanings in the organization.

QC 20100428

The objective of this research was to: Develop and evaluate a method which supports performance improvement in industrial operations. This has been done through several case studies and literature research. The result is a scientifically evaluated Performance Improvement Method. All companies strive for better performance, since a high performance level means greater competitiveness, which in turn generates more money. However, there are an extensive number of change and improvement methods described in many different research fields. Moreover, a number of issues, which are linked to these Performance Improvement Methods have been identified. The issues were summarised as criteria, which were posed on both existing improvement methods and the newly developed method, for evaluation and development purposes. The most important issues with Performance Improvement were found to be that most methods were specialist dependent and did not have competence support. Efforts to improve performance in manufacturing operations have been important since the start of the industrialisation era. Some of the first well-known and well-documented practitioners in the area of PI were Taylor and Ford; so there have been many attempts to work with Performance Improvement. A definition of performance, profitability and productivity is presented to show how they can support improvement work. Performance measurement is important to form a basis of facts to link Performance Improvement on. Furthermore, two models, a performance factor model and a performance measurement model, have been developed for use with Performance Improvement. An evaluation of commonly used improvement methods such as Lean Production, Just in Time, Total Productive Maintenance, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints and Business Process Reengineering, shows both strengths and weaknesses, which were used in the development of the new Improvement Method. Furthermore, a number of case studies were performed to give empirical input to the Performance Improvement Method for practical use. With these practical and theoretical considerations, a formalisation of the Performance Improvement Method was carried out. The Performance Improvement Method has been evaluated through 4 full-scale case studies. The case studies showed that the new Performance Improvement Method has higher criteria support than the other improvement methods evaluated in this research. / QC 20100709

In a time when corruption is receiving increasing media coverage and when many claim to wage a war on corruption, this book brings up the need for a problematisation and an increased understanding of the different manifestations – the vicissitudes – of corruption and also what measures are taken against it. The book advances the claim that corruption is tightly related to modernity and particularly to a transgression of the public / private dichotomy. It furthermore explores ancient, postmodern and psychoanalytic critiques of the modern understanding of corruption. The ancient perspective stems from theorists arguing that there is an ancient core meaning of corruption, i.e. degeneration. This perspective is also informed by a discussion about virtues based on Alasdair MacIntyre. The postmodern perspective is based on Zygmunt Bauman. It is held that corruption is the remnant of the classification of the world into the public and the private, caused by the inherent ambiguity of reality. The psychoanalytic perspective, based on Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek, deepens the analysis and relates corruption to stolen enjoyment – jouissance. These different understandings of corruption are used to analyse primarily bribery in Swedish public sector procurement. In interviews, project managers responsible for public procurement give their account not only of bribes and gifts, but also about partiality and objectivity in supplier evaluations. Using these interviews and theoretical perspectives, the book problematises corruption and investigates how it is addressed and externalised with clear rules, virtues and rituals separating the public role from the private . / QC 20100512

Isaberg-Rapid has problems with their internal material handling. The goal with this report is to create a layout for a pilot group in the production. Furthermore will appropriate carriers be suggested and the way of communicate between the stock keeping unit through coating to the assembly group will be analyzed. The focal point is on a pilot group where the assembly of staple guns occurs. We have reviewed the material handling in the pilot group. By doing a spaghetti diagram the assemblers’ movements in the group is being analyzed and from that a new layout is proposed that will facilitate the handling of material in the assembly group. Besides the spaghetti diagram the report is based on observations, interviews, a process flow schedule, a layout flow schedule and calculations. To make the material flow to the assembly group more effective a proposal with a supermarket has been developed. The reason for using a supermarket is also to minimize tied up capital after coating. The transportation of material is handled by a dedicated material handler to minimize the interruptions in work for the assemblers. The carriers that are used in the assembly group has been reviewed and to easily handle these a proposal with FIFO lines has been developed to make it easier for the assemblers. / Materialhantering, layout, kanban, kapitalbindning, FIFU

<!--[if !mso]> <object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id=ieooui></object><mce:style><! st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } --> This report is the result of an investigation of the possibility to use RFID-technology in a producing company. The investigation is focused on a flow between the company’s producing subsidiary company in Lithuania and its main facility in Sweden. RFID is the abbreviation for radiofrequency identification. The RFID-technology forms the base of a system with wireless information transmission between an object to which a transponder, also called tag, has been attached and a reader. The information is transmitted by radio waves and the system is equipped with software that can digitalise the radio waves. The information is thereby converted into useful input to, for example, the company’s business system. RFID makes it possible to decrease the human interaction necessary and does not demand free line of sight in contrast to barcode systems. The objective of this final thesis is to: ·         give suggestions of how RFID can be applied in the flow of pallets between the Lithuanian subsidiary company and the main facility in Sweden ·         investigate if the adoption is practicable and what consequences will follow the suggested appliance ·         present profitability calculations ·         investigate what future opportunities the technology offers the company The scope of my work is to be able to present a report to the company that gives them a good insight in the RFID-technology and to give suggestions on how to use it in their operations. The report shall be useable as a decision basis for the company when deciding weather it is interesting for them to continue the investigation or not. The result of the investigation is a description of the flow which forms the basis of the two suggested alternatives of application of RFID-technology. The first alternative consists of a system of active tags which is attached to the pallets directly after the goods are produced. The second alternative is a system based on the use of passive tags in the form of self adhesive labels. Both alternatives induce a division of the flow into five zones between which a reading of the tags takes place and the pallets are thereby identified automatically. The system of active tags results in an initial investment of SEK 1 256 000 and the system of passive tags, SEK 227 000. Both alternatives make a SEK 648 000 saving in cost possible, mainly consisting of decreasing need of working effort in identifying pallets and manual reporting to the business system.     An analysis of the suggestions shows that the pay-back time for the alternative with active tags may be too long depending on the company’s intentions of future expansion of the system. The investment can be proven justifiable after a more thorough investigation. Concerning the system of passive tags, the analysis shows that the alternative is practicable and gives a great chance of fast profitability and also further profitability over time. The investigation is based on a theoretic study of RFID, Supply Chain Management and process analysis. A survey of the process has resulted in a flow chart and this has formed the basis of the work resulting in the two suggested applications. These have then been evaluated from a profitability and practicability perspective.

Balansering av tillgång och efterfrågan har alltid varit ett aktuellt ämne och för att klara av denna balansering krävs information om kommande efterfrågan. Denna information måste ligga så långt fram i tiden som det tar för att med säkerhet få hem exempelvis material. För att lyckas med detta använder sig företag i olika utsträckning av uppskattad framtida efterfrågan, så kallade prognoser. Prognoser kan definieras som systematiska metoder för att förutsäga framtida händelser. Problemet är att oavsett hur prognoser görs stämmer det prognostiserade värdet nästan aldrig överens med det verkliga utfallet. Många företag vet att deras prognoser inte är exakta utan att veta vad de ska göra åt saken. Många gånger ignorerar de bara problemet och hoppas att det ska lösa sig självt. För att kunna förbättra sina prognoser bör därför dokumentation och uppföljning ske av det arbete som görs. Med hjälp av uppföljning kan prognosfel beräknas, ett prognosfel är avvikelsen mellan det prognostiserade värdet och det verkliga utfallet. I de fall då prognosfelen är små kan företag genom dokumentation identifiera vad som urskilde dessa perioder från de med högre prognosfel. Författarna har i denna uppsats försökt beskriva hur företag kan uppnå en förbättrad prognosprocess med en lägre prognosavvikelse. Uppsatsen syftar också till att väcka intresset för samarbete över företagsgränser. Collaborative forecasting är en av metoderna som författarna har använt sig av för att överkomma problemen med traditionell prognostisering och som samtidigt är i linje med supply chain management. Denna metod samlar ihop och sammanställer information från både interna och externa källor för att sedan sammanställa en prognos som stöds av hela organisationen. Uppsatsen är en fallstudie hos vitvaruföretaget Asko Cylinda AB. För att få ytterligare idéer om hur prognosprocessen kan se ut i praktiken har författarna också tittat på prognosprocessen hos Volvo Penta AB. Båda företagens prognosprocesser har sedan analyserats och jämförts med hjälp av teori från litteratur och artiklar. Genom denna analys har författarna kommit fram till förslag på arbetssätt som Asko Cylinda AB och företag med liknande företagsmiljö kan använda sig av för att förbättra sin prognosprocess. Analyskapitlet är uppbyggt enligt tre scenarier, en nulägesbeskrivning, ett förslag på en enkel prognosprocess och ett förslag på en mer avancerad prognosprocess. I analysen har olika mätetal används för att åskådliggöra hur prognosavvikelsen varierar då till exempel olika prognosberäkningsmetoder används. Utifrån scenarierna som analyserats har författarna kommit fram till att det finns många fördelar med Asko Cylinda AB:s nuvarande arbetssätt och att flera av dessa stöds av teorin. En fördel med en enklare prognosprocess är att den allokerar betydligt mindre resurser än vad som görs i dagsläget. Detta är enligt författarna inte tillräckligt skäl att använda sig av den enkla varianten då framtiden går mot mer samarbete över företagsgränserna för att gemensamt öka konkurrenskraften. Arbetssättet som analyseras i scenario 3 ses av författarna som det bästa alternativet. Detta scenario har hämtat mycket inspiration från teorierna om collaborative forecasting, vilket bidrar till en process som arbetar mer enligt supply chain management. Även delar från både den nuvarande prognosprocessen och Volvo Penta AB:s prognosprocess har använts för att för att uppnå detta arbetssättsförslag som baserats på både teori och praktik och utformats för att vara slagkraftigt i framtiden.