Allt fler företag har med tiden sett outsourcing som en lösning för att bli mer konkurrenskraftiga. Företag kan välja att outsourca kärnverksamheten och därmed ställs höga krav på leverantörerna och samarbetet. De frågor som uppsatsen söker svar på är: Vilken betydelse har förtroende vid outsourcing av produktutveckling? Hur uppstår förtroendet? Undersökningen avser att analysera hur förtroendet för leverantören påverkar outsourcingen av produktutveckling. Genom att diskutera förhållandet mellan förtroende och transaktionskostnader kommer dessa faktorers betydelse för samarbetet mellan kund och leverantör att presenteras. Syftet med uppsatsen är att få en förståelse för hur ett företag arbetar med förtroende mot leverantörer då kärnverksamheten utkontrakteras. Studien har genomförts som en kvalitativ fallstudie. Fem personer intervjuades, dessa innehade roller som, inköpare, outsourcing managers, patentansvarig, samt kvalitetsansvarig. Intervjuerna var semistrukturerade med öppna, strukturerade, frågor. För att analysera svaren användes en modell som föreslagits för analys av förtroende mellan parter av Greenberg et al. (2008). Enligt denna modell beror förtroende mellan parter på tre faktorer integritet, välvilja och förmåga. Alla aktiviteter som uppstår vid outsourcingen kan ses som transaktionskostnader vilka har delats in i, kontaktkostnader, kontraktkostnader och kontrollkostnader. Resultatet visar på en tydlig koppling mellan förtroende och reducerade transaktionskostnader. Förtroendet uppkommer genom kontinuitet och god kommunikation. Resultatet visar också att förtroende till en del är formaliserat och till en del icke-formaliserat. Av dessa är det formaliserade förtroendet mest betydelsefullt. Detta formaliserade förtroende var beroende av kontroll för att kunna utvecklas. Praktiskt visar studien att förtroende är en viktig faktor inom outsourcing av produktutveckling och att förtroendet uppfattas som betydelsefullt av flera typer av experter som är inblandade i outsourcing. Att studera balansen mellan formaliserat och icke-formaliserat förtroende och inom outsourcing av komplexa kärnverksamheter och denna balans betydelse för transaktionskostnader kan vara ett intressant ämne för framtida forskning. / Over time more and more companies have started to look at outsourcing as an opportunity for improved competiveness. A company may choose to outsource its core business and this will be challenging for the suppliers and for the collaboration. This thesis is trying to answer the following questions: What is the importance of trust in outsourcing of product development? How is the trust formed? The investigation intends to analyze how trust in the supplier is affecting outsourcing of product development. The relationship between trust and transaction costs is discussed as well as the effect of these factors on the collaboration with the supplier. The objective is to reach an understanding of how a company uses trust in outsourcing of core business activities. The investigation was performed as a qualitative case study. Five respondents with roles as purchaser, outsourcing manager, patent attorney and quality assurance professional, were interviewed. The interviews were semi structured with open structured questions. A model, suggested by Greenberg et al. (2008), for analysis of trust between parties was used to analyze the responses. According to this model, trust can be related to three factors: integrity, benevolence and competence and different activities can be attributed to contact costs, contract costs and control costs. The result shows a clear relationship between trust and reduced transaction costs. The trust is developed through continuity and good communication. The result also shows that the trust is partly formalized and partly non-formalized and that the formalized trust is most important of the two. The development of formalized trust is dependent on control. Practical implication of the study is that trust is important in outsourcing of product development and the importance of trust is acknowledged by different experts involved in outsourcing. The balance between formalized and non-formalized trust in outsourcing of complex core business activities and the impact of this balance on transactions costs may be an interesting topic for future studies.

Environmental concern has greatly increased in magnitude within the companies of Swedish industry. Product development has become a strategic area: the environmental adaptation of products is fundamental for a decrease in environmental impact from human activities, and product development is an area of the greatest importance to the competitiveness of companies. Integrating environmental aspects into product development at operations level is needed to achieve product improvements. The theme of this thesis is how to integrate environmental aspects into product development. An overarching purpose has been to identify adequate activities and changes required for integration. Great importance has been attached to conducting changes, especially by investigating how successfully to implement support tools in product development. Qualitative research interviews have been used to collect empirical data. Conclusions on measures industrially applicable to enabling the integration of environmental aspects have been drawn, as empirical data and experiences have been accumulated. Environmental aspects give rise to new considerations in product development: causal relationships between products and environmental impact; the life-cycle approach; and, new priorities and trade-offs between function, cost and quality of products. A need for activities supporting these considerations is identified; and, preferably, several activities, concerning knowledge development, work procedures and support tools, should be applied. It is also important to identify environmental actors for providing expertise and enthusiasm in the organisation. The implementation of support tools has to be carefully considered. To guide such implementation a framework with key factors has been developed. The framework suggests a cyclical implementation process, identification of the organisational change field, and consistent management behaviour. Keys to successful implementation are goal setting, knowledge development, adequate resources, anchoring at all levels, and a focus on individuals. To stay competitive, companies need to be proactive and respond to the driving forces underlying environmental adaptation. To make possible the environmental adaptation of products, several measures are needed. The following proactive measures have been identified: Management ought to set direction with a comprehensive view on business development and physical flows in the business. Commitment to desired change must be created to make sure changes are accepted and durable. Knowledge and skills need to be developed with an action learning approach. Work procedures need to be adjusted to include environmental criteria and secure interaction between product developers and environmental experts. Support tools can support a structured approach and enable rapid progress to be attained. / QC 20100623

For many organizations, efficiency in product development is a question of accel¬erating project operations and being innovative in products and technical solutions, and this has interesting consequences for project work. This thesis aims to study technical development work in project groups in order to identify factors that support innovativeness. In this thesis, innovativeness is defined as the ability of project groups to arrive at new ideas and solutions for technical problems, and their implementation. It is hoped that the studies in this thesis will contribute new knowledge in the product development research area, using complementary theories. This thesis is based on four case studies of product development projects, representing different types of industry. The cases involve the development of new, complex industrial products and are reported in four appended papers. The research reported in this thesis has primarily, but not exclusively, adopted a qualitative approach. The studies have shown that innovativeness is favored by project work characterized by lower levels of control, the continuous acquisition of knowledge and a sense of responsibility and interest in tasks, as well as a continuous formulation and definition of tasks and problems. In addition, project work characterized by commitment and interaction have also been found to be important for innovativeness. Three factors supporting innovativeness are presented. Interactive product utilization in work is an alternative to detailed planning in solving coordination needs and maintaining a system view within a project. Interactive control mechanisms are important because product specifications often need to be defined as the project progresses. An interactive social environment supports technical problem solving by providing opportunities for spontaneous interaction between project members. / QC 20101001

Despite its strategic importance most firms managing complex product development fail to meet their pre-set or emerging targets. This thesis argues that this is due to a number of limitations in the fundamental assumptions behind the dominant approach based on planning. Two alternative approaches are introduced and elaborated based on extensive empirical investigation of five organizational settings at Ericsson applying the dominant approach and two organizational settings also at Ericsson that repeatedly succeed to meet pre-set and emerging targets. The two alternative approaches; integrationdriven development and dynamic synchronization are based on integration, building dependencies, allocating resources to the boundaries and building a capacity for real-time handling of both emerging problems and opportunities rather than minimizing deviations from the pre-set plan. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 1999

“Enabling Knowledge Communication between Companies” is essential for creating competitive advantage from collaborations. Communicating knowledge is about the capacity to e.g. transfer knowledge, create learning and design new technology. It is an issue of increasing importance to many companies whose operations are outsourced, offshored and integrated with alliance partners. This book addresses the type of collaboration that perhaps is the most challenging to manage – the development of new and complex products between companies. Collaboration on product development is attractive to many companies because of opportunities to share costs, distribute risks and enhance innovation potential. Achieving the goals of such collaborations is often hard because of difficulties with knowledge communication. The book identies issues that are critical for enabling knowledge communication between companies, including: The role of work integration between collaborating companies. The type of location suitable for different kinds of product development between companies. The managing of differences in companies’ perspectives on product technology and development processes. If you are in a position of leading, planning or analysing advanced collaboration with other companies, you should benefit from this study. It is intended for both researchers and managers dealing with operations between the company and its external network of partners, suppliers and customers. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2008

Syftet med uppsatsen är att analysera utlokaliseringen av tekoindustrin i EU15. Man finner svaren i följande frågor: Vilka faktorer bidrar till omflyttning av produktionen till låglöne-länder? Vilka är vinnarna och förlorarna på denna omstrukturering? Hur klarar den Euro-peiska tekoindustrin av dessa utmaningar? Att redogöra för varje EU-land är för omfattan-de därför valdes Sverige och Portugal beroende på att respektive land har en utvecklad och mindre utvecklad ekonomi. Därutöver riktas deras produktion mot olika sektorer av teko-industrin vilket möjliggjorde landsjämförelsen. Största delen av datan har samlats från SourceOECD’s hemsida då den innehåller information som är viktigast for uppsatsen. Re-sultatet visar att när industrin utvecklas och marknaden till slut blir överhettad börjar indu-strilandet att flytta produktionen utomlands, fokuseringen ändras och impörten blir allt vik-tigare. Denna process sker gradvis med hjälp av liberalisering av världshandel och EU ut-ökning. / The purpose of this paper is to analyze the location dynamics of textile and clothing industries in the EU15. Specifically, it seeks to answer the following questions: What are the factors that contribute to the relocation of European production to low-wage countries? Who are hurt by these changes and who gain? How does the European textile and clothing industry cope with these challenges? It is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze the T/C industry of each EU15 member state. Instead, it specifically investigates Sweden and Portugal’s textile and clothing sectors simply because the former represents Europe’s old economy while the latter the most recent one. In addition, each country devotes its production to the different sectors of the industry, hence this cross-country comparison. Majority of the data is gathered from SourceOECD as the webpage contains information of most value to this paper. The result of this study shows that as an industry matures and competition heats up pricing measures, the developed country moves production operations overseas, ends up as a net importer of the good and shifts focus toward other activities. This process takes effect gradually but the liberalisation of world trade and European enlargement are a few contributing factors which helped anchor relocation decisions.

The problem of automating design processes is often related to the difficulties with updating, maintaining and sharing the information. This thesis provides a descriptive case study of a large company’s design automation process and the difficulties of reusing already existing solutions.   The main purpose of the thesis has been to trace a product family from its specification of demands to a complete design program. An account is given of the documentation written during the product development process, of the different data storages and also how the company has implemented design automation in their process.   The results have been reached through a series of interviews as well as previous studies and material from the company. From an analysis of the results proposed solutions are given and focus on the low quality the documentation has and how it is a result of a rapid growth within the company.

Denna rapport kommer av avhandla det examensarbete som genomförts inom civilingenjörsprogrammet innovation och produktdesign på Mälardalens högskola. Arbetet har genomförts på RemaControl Sweden AB och startade den 3:e september 2012 med slutpresentation den 29:e mars 2013. RemaControl är ett företag som är baserat i Västerås och tillverkar mätsystem till sågverksindustrin. Den produkt som detta projekt har kretsat runt är deras mätsystem som heter RemaLog X-Ray som är ett ”state-of-the-art-system” som använder sig av röntgen för att läsa av mätdata från trästockar när de kommer in på sågverket. Uppdraget från RemaControl var att omkonstruera den skyddshuv som omsluter röntgenrören. Dess syfte är att skydda miljön utanför mätramen från strålning som röntgenrören genererar. Röntgenrören måste servas vart 6:e månad och för att komma åt röntgenrören så måste man i dagsläget montera bort skyddsramen. Detta är ett moment som tar tid och är slitsamt för servicepersonalens ryggar eftersom den är svåråtkomlig och väger över 25 kg. Anledningen till dess höga vikt är på grund av att den måste vara tillverkad med blyväggar för att stoppa strålningen. Det är även viktigt för sågverken att servicetiden är så kort som möjligt eftersom det minskar tiden som banan behöver stå still, i vilket sågverken förlorar pengar. För att lösa detta problem så har uppdraget delats upp i olika delproblem som har lösts på olika sätt. Det har tagits fram olika koncept med hjälp av CAD. Dessa koncept har utvärderats och en helhetslösning har tagits fram som uppfyller RemaControls krav. Utöver detta så har även en prototyp tagits fram för att säkerställa att dess egenskaper uppfyller även alla krav i praktiken. / This report contains the thesis work in the civil engineering program of innovation and product design on Mälardalens Högskola, Sweden. This work has been collaboration with RemaControl Sweden AB and it started on September the 5th 2012 and was presented on April the 5th 2013. RemaControl is a company that is based in Västerås, Sweden, and manufactures measuring systems for the sawmill industry. This project has been focused on their system RemaLog XRay that is a state-of-the-art-system that implements x-ray-technology to retrieve measuring data from incoming logs of wood. The assignment from RemaControl was to redesign the protective housing that contains the xray tubes. Its purpose is to protect the outside environment from radiation generated from the x-ray tubes. The x-ray tube needs to be maintained every 6 thmonths and to retrieve the x-ray tubes it is necessary to remove the protective housing in its present configuration. This operation puts the service engineers backs in unfavorable positions because it is very inaccessible to retrieve and has a weight of more than 25 kg. The reason for this weight is because that the protective housing needs to be constructed with walls of pure lead to protect the outside environment from the radiation. It is also important for sawmills that the time of the service is as short as possible because it prevents interruption of the runway, from which sawmills loses money. To solve this assignment the problem has been divided into sub problems that have been solved with different methods. Different concept solutions have been creating using CAD. These concepts have been evaluated and a final solution has been created that meets the requirement from RemaControl. To ensure that its practical properties are sufficient, a prototype has also been developed.

Företaget Cibes lift AB tillverkar skruvdrivna plattformshissar i olika storleksklasser för laster upp till tusen kilogram. Plattformhissar är ett mindre utrymmeskrävande alternativ till vanliga standardhissar och lyder under EU:s maskindirektiv. Masskonsumtion och prissättning tvingar företag att utveckla nya strategier för att hantera större flexibilitet och lägre tillverkningskostnader. Då även Cibes jobbar kontinuerligt med att kostnadseffektivisera sina produkter hade arbetet till syfte att göra en omkonstruktion av den bärande ramen till företagets standardmodell A5. Den nya ramkonstruktionen skulle utvecklas med avseende på kostnadsreducering, moderna tillverkningstekniker och hög tillverkningseffektivitet. Genom en litteraturstudie i ämnet, kostnadseffektiv produktion, identifierades en modell för konstruktionsprocessen som tillämpades i arbetet med omkonstruktionen.   Omkonstruktionen utgick från ett belastningstest och en finita elementanalys av den befintliga ramen där kritiska punkter identifierades och randvillkor verifierandes. Genom produktutvecklingsmetoden kvalitetshuset skapades en teknisk specifikation med målvärden för omkonstruktionen. För att identifiera tillgängliga produktionsresurser och utveckla en konstruktion anpassad till de resurser som finns att tillgå besöktes i ett tidigt skede två tänkbara underleverantörer. Tillsammans genererade nulägesanalysen, den tekniska specifikationen och de tillgängliga produktionsresurserna en konceptmodell. Konceptmodellen utvärderades genom att med teori för utböjning analysera olika tänkbara tvärsnitt för bärande profiler. Profiler och övriga komponenter dimensionerades sedan genom finita elementanalyser mot hållfasthetskrav enligt gällande standard och kostnadskrav för att skapa en optimal lösning.   Resultatet av arbetet är en standardiserad bärande ram som passar företagets samtliga tre varumärken. Ramen är uppbyggd av enbart plåt och kallformade profiler anpassad för en mer automatiserad produktion. I jämförelse med den befintligta konstruktionen har vikten minskats med drygt tre procent, den förväntade inköpskostnaden sänkts med cirka 15 procent och nedböjningen av den bärande ramens golv minskades med runt 33 procent. Vår slutsats av detta arbete är att den modell som används för konstruktionsprocessen är väl lämpad för att generera kostnadseffektiva produkter. / The company Cibes Lift AB manufactures screw-driven platform lifts in different sizes for loads up to a thousand kilogram. Platform lifts are a less space consuming alternative to usual standard elevators and subjected to the EU Machinery Directive. Mass consumption and pricing is forcing companies to develop new strategies to handle greater flexibility and lower their manufacturing costs. Since also Cibes are continuously working with cost efficiency of their products the work had the aim to make a redesign of the supporting frame to their standard model A5. The new frame design would be developed in terms of cost reduction, modern manufacturing techniques and high production efficiency. Through a literature review on the subject of cost-effective production a model for the design process were identified and applied in the process of the redesign.   The redesign started with a practical load test and a finite element analysis of the existing frame in which critical points were identified and boundary conditions was confirmed. The product development method the House of Quality where used to create a technology specification and target values for the redesign. To identify the available production resources and develop a design appropriate to the available resources two possible subcontractors were visited in an early state. Together the analysis of current frame, the technical specification and the available production resources generated a concept model. The concept model was evaluated by the theory of deflection and analyze of various possible cross-sections for the bearing profiles. Profiles and other components were dimensioned trough finite element analyses against the strength requirements according to applicable standards and cost requirements in order to create an optimal solution.   The result of this work is a standardized supporting frame that fits all the company's three brands. The frame is constructed entirely of steel and cold-formed sections designed for a more automated production. In comparison with the current design the weight has been reduced by more than three percent, the expected purchase cost has been reduced by approximately 15 percent and the deflection of the supporting frames floor was reduced by around 33 percent. We make the conclusion by this work that the model used for the redesign is well suited to generate cost-effective products.

In any organization, formal and informal face-to-face meetings make up a profound part in the daily life of its members. Meetings are played out continuously, some formal, such as a management board meeting, an information meeting, or a project meeting. The formal meetings people “attend to”, “participate in”, or “are in charge of” depending on a person’s position within them. Other meetings are less formal, such as a desk-side discussion, a chat in the hallway, or a private conversation between two colleagues. The latter often just appear, seemingly by chance. This dissertation examines meetings, as a way of observing the organizing process of complex product development projects. More specifically, organizations engaging in complex product development can be viewed as tension systems, where the dominant tension is between innovation and control. From this perspective, a critical challenge for a product development project becomes one of managing a balancing act between individual action and creativity, on one hand, and collaboration and control, on the other, ensuring that ideas and knowledge retrieved by their parts can be pooled into an integrated whole. By studying the interplay between different types of face-to-face meetings that took place in two projects developing telecommunication systems, this thesis engages in an inquiry of how this balancing act was played out in practice. The findings of the study suggest that the informal meetings comprised occasions that facilitated the perception of complex and ambiguous issues and gave rise to innovative interpretations of how to deal with them. When issues have been defined and interpreted, formal meetings were used to “elevate” and “enter” them into a formal existence. Then, formal claims for action could be established in which people in the projects were organized around the task of solving a specific and recognized problem.  Thus, formal meetings served as a controlling and structuring function. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2002</p>