This thesis discusses the history of the closed shop as a form of union security and the changes that arose with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Law in 1947 which declared the closed shop illegal and morally reprehensible.

Studien genomfördes på industriföretaget Gränges Finspång AB som är en producent av valsade aluminiumprodukter för värmeväxlare vilka används som komponenter främst inom bilindustrin och värme, ventilation och luftkonditionering. Aluminium är en miljöeffektiv råvara tack vare materialets naturliga egenskaper samt dess återanvändbarhet vilket har lett till att allt fler företag vill ta vara på dessa egenskaper vid tillverkning av klimatsmarta produkter. För Gränges Finspång AB har materialets aktualitet på marknaden inneburit en ökad efterfrågan på företagets produkter vilket i sin tur har satt ökad press på företagets produktionseffektivitet. Den produktionsprocess som studerades på företaget var en uppsättning maskiner – även kallade kallvalsverk – vilka kan liknas med en funktionell verkstad. Syftet med studien var att, med hjälp av optimeringsmetoder, ta fram en modell som kan användas som beslutsunderlag för sekvensering av produkter i företagets kallvalsverk. Utifrån intervjuer, granskning av interna dokument och en kvantitativ dataanalys genomfördes en kartläggning av Gränges Finspång AB:s hela produktionsflöde såväl som de processer unika för kallvalsprocessen. För sekvensering av företagets produkter tillämpades en linjär heltalsmodell vilken anger optimum för maximalt 14 produkter. Studien bekräftar att företagets kallvalsning är ett komplext produktionssystem ur ett schemaläggningsperspektiv. / <p>Examensarbetet är utfört vid Institutionen för teknik och naturvetenskap (ITN) vid Tekniska fakulteten, Linköpings universitet</p>

Companies have an important role to play in sustainability initiatives as they have great power to drive development. Working with sustainability issues can be seen as crucial to their survival, as various stakeholders today place high demands on companies to take responsibility in this area. This study aims to critically examine The Body Shop’s sustainability communication in order to gain a deeper understanding of how the company constructs a sustainable brand. The study is based on the following questions: (1) How does The Body Shop communicate sustainability? (2) Which discourses are most prominent in The Body Shop’s communication? (3) What does The Body Shop convey through its sustainability communication? The material consists of The Body Shop’s sustainability report, as it is an important part of a company’s sustainability communication. The study’s theoretical framework is based on theories of critical discourse theory, consumer society, brand identity and brand activism. Furthermore, the methodology of the study is multimodal critical discourse analysis, where we have used different analysis tools to study both visual and textual elements of the company’s sustainability report. To see how The Body Shop relates to the sustainability discourse and constructs a sustainable brand, different discursive themes were identified based on the roles the company takes in its communication. The two most prominent roles are the role of the fair company and the role of the innovative company, which further contribute to the maintenance of the sustainability discourse. The result shows that The Body Shop communicates in a transparent way, using informative and persuasive language which creates a sense of credibility. We can conclude that The Body Shop presents itself as a leader in the field and often as the solution to various societal problems. Finally, The Body Shop presents its sustainability communication as a goal rather than a means, as it appears that sustainable development is the company’s sole purpose.

Steigende Anforderungen an die Genauigkeit und Aussagekraft numerischer Berechnungen sowie neue Werkstoffe und Prozesse erfordern zunehmend technologische Erweiterungen und Entwicklungen innerhalb der Softwarelösungen. Neben der Ausweitung von Möglichkeiten in der Material- und Prozessmodellierung sowie der genaueren Abbildung physikalischer Prozesse, stehen dabei zunehmend Prozessketten im Fokus. Die Historie, welche Halbzeuge oder Bauteile bereits vom Urformprozess an mit sich führen, bestimmt dabei zu einem erheblichen Grad die Eigenschaften und damit auch mögliche Verfahrensgrenzen in allen nachfolgenden Prozessstufen. Dadurch wird deutlich, dass eine Betrachtung ebendieser vorangegangenen Schritte einen deutlichen Einfluss auf das Bauteilverhalten in den Folgeprozessen hat, wodurch die Aussagekraft entkoppelter Simulationen ab einem bestimmten Detailgrad dahingehend begrenzt bleibt. Der damit steigenden Komplexität von Berechnungsproblemen stehen auf der anderen Seite Forderungen einer immer leichter und intuitiver werdenden Bedienung von Simulationssoftware entgegen. Hexagons Smart Shop Softwarelösungen nehmen dabei das Problem der Prozessketten- simulation von der Umformung bis zur Assemblierung in den Fokus. Neben der Berechnung und Evaluierung von komplexen metallischen Baugruppen sowie der nahtlosen Integration physischer Messtechnik, spielt dabei die Bedienbarkeit eine bedeutende Rolle. Das Ziel ist mögliche Probleme in der Produktentwicklung zeitnah zu detektieren und zu adressieren, um physische Prototypen auf ein Minimum reduzieren zu können (Abbildung 1). Am Beispiel eines Karosseriebauteils erfolgt innerhalb des Beitrags die Darstellung eines Workflows zur Detektion möglicher Fertigungsprobleme in der Produktentwicklungsphase sowie die Beleuchtung weiterer Anwendungsfälle. / Increasing demands towards the accuracy and significance of numerical simulations as well as new materials and processes require technological enhancements and developments within the software solutions. Beyond extending possibilities for material- and process modeling as well as more accurate prediction of physical behavior, process chains get into the spotlight more and more. The history which parts already inherit as from the casting stage on determines the attributes and therefore also possible process limits in all following production stages. This illustrates that the analysis of this preceding process steps has a significant impact on the part behavior in all subsequent steps, which is why the meaningfulness of decoupled simulations is limited at a certain demand for detail. The increasing complexity of the simulation problems on one hand are facing demands for higher user friendliness and more intuitive control of the simulation software on the other hand. Hexagons Smart Shop software solutions have their focus on the process chain simulation from forming to assembly. Beyond the calculation and evaluation of complex metallic assemblies and the seamless integration of metrology devices, usability plays a major role. The aim hereby is to detect and address possible issue within the product development as early as possible and therefore reduce physical prototypes to a minimum. With the example of a body in white part, it is shown how a workflow for the detection of possible manufacturing challenges within the product development as well as other alternative use cases can look like.

Background: Optimal scheduling is a common practice in various industries, facili-tating efficient workflow management. Accelerating the generation of schedules while maintaining their optimality could encourage broader adoption of this approach inindustry settings. Previous work has aimed to estimate the makespan for the JobShop Scheduling Problem, showing promising results. Objectives: Given the increasing demand for AI and Machine Learning (ML) solutions across industries, this research aims to explore the integration of ML techniquesinto optimal scheduling processes. Specifically, the goal is to develop a faster scheduling solution without compromising the optimality of the generated schedules. The proposed approach combines the effectiveness and speed of ML with the optimal results obtained from mathematical scheduling models. Methods: This thesis focuses on the Job Shop Scheduling (JSS) Problem, where a mathematical scheduler is tasked with minimizing the makespan of a set of jobs while following a predefined set of rules. An initial investigation is performed to establish if there is potential in providing the scheduler with its optimal makespan to decrease the scheduling time. To generalize the application of the concept, the study investigates the potential efficiency acceleration achieved by providing the scheduler with a Machine Learning estimated makespan. This involves training a Neural Network(NN) to estimate the optimal makespan of job sets, which is then utilized to speedup the scheduling process. Results: The preliminary investigation demonstrates that providing the scheduler with the optimal makespan results in an average speed-up of schedule generationby 24%. The results of the scheduling time with the NN estimated makespan is on the other hand not as well performing. Despite achieving a level of accuracy in estimating the makespan, the resulting speed-up in the scheduler’s performance falls short. For the scheduler to benefit from being provided an estimated makespan it is therefore theorized to require a close-to-perfect estimation of the makespan, which was not achieved with the trained NN model. The trained NN reached an average accuracy of 95.75%. Conclusions: The study concludes that while ML models can accurately estimate makespan, the observed speed-up in scheduling performance is not as significant as anticipated. The correlation between well-estimated makespan and speed-up appearsto be inconsistent, indicating potential limitations in the current approach. Further investigation into the search algorithm employed by the scheduling tool Gurobi mayprovide insights into optimizing the scheduling process more effectively. In summary, while the integration of ML techniques shows promise in accelerating scheduling processes, a higher accuracy of the ML model would be required. Additional researchis needed to refine the approach and potentially bring a faster optimal scheduling solution into the future. / Bakgrund: Optimal schemaläggning är en vanlig implemetation inom flera olika branscher och underlättar hantering och effektiviserar arbetsflöden. Att påskynda genereringen av scheman samtidigt som den optimala aspekten av schemaläggning inte går till spillo, skulle kunna främja en bredare användning av optimal schemaläggning för fler brancher. Tidigare undersökningar har gjorts för att estimera "makespan" för Job Shop problemet inom schemaläggning och har visat lovande resultat. Syfte: Med den ökande efterfrågan på AI- och maskininlärnings lösningar inom olika branscher syftar denna forskning till att utforska integrationen av ML-tekniker i den optimala schemaläggningsprocessen. Målet är att utveckla en snabbare schemaläggningslösning utan att kompromissa med det genererade schemats optimalitet. Det föreslagna tillvägagångssättet kombinerar ML’s effektivitet och hastighet med de optimala resultaten som den matematiska schemaläggningsmodellen erbjuder. Metod: Forskningen fokuserar på problemet med schemaläggning för jobbshoppen(JSSP), där en matematisk schemaläggare har i uppgift att minimera makespan fören uppsättning jobb med hänsyn till ett par fördefinierade regler. En initial under-sökning görs, vilket visar att det finns potential i att tillhandahålla schemaläggarendess optimala makespan för att minska schemaläggningstiden. För att generalisera tillämpningen undersöker studien den potentiella accelerationen som uppnås genomatt tillhandahålla schemaläggaren ett maskininlärt uppskattat makespan. Detta medför att träna ett neuralt nätverk för att uppskatta det optimala makespanet för en mängd jobbuppsättningar, som sedan används för att påskynda schemaläggningsprocessen. Resultat: Den preliminära undersökningen visar att schemaläggaren resulterar i igenomsnittlig hastighetsökning av schemagenereringen med cirka 24% när den får tillgång till det optimala makespanet för de givna jobben. Resultaten av schemaläggningstiden med det neurala nätverkets uppskattade makespan är dock lägre än förväntat. Trots att en viss noggrannhetsnivå uppnås vid estimeringen av makespanet, når den resulterande hastighetsökningen i schemaläggarens prestanda inte upp tillförväntningarna. För att schemaläggaren ska dra nytta av att tillhandahålla ett uppskattad makespan krävs en nära perfekt uppskattning av makespan, vilket inte uppnåddes med det tränade neurala nätverket. Slutsatser: Studien drar slutsatsen att även om ML-modeller kan uppskatta makespan någorlunda noggrant, är den observerade hastighetsökningen i schemaläggningen inte lika betydande som förväntat. Korrelationen mellan väl uppskattad makespan och hastighetsökning verkar vara inkonsekvent, vilket indikerar potentiella begränsningar i det nuvarande tillvägagångssättet. Vidare undersökning av sökalgoritmen som används av schemaläggningsverktyget Gurobi kan ge insikter för att optimera schemaläggningsprocessen mer effektivt. Sammanfattningsvis visar integrationen av ML-tekniker lovande resultat för att accelerera schemaläggningsprocesser, men en bättre estimering av makespan skulle krävas. Ytterligare forskning behövs för att förbättra tillvägagångssättet och potentiellt introducera en snabbare optimal schemaläggningslösning för framtiden.

With the economic growth in Thailand in the recent year, Thai people have enough money to concern about the healthy product. Now a day, in Bangkok, Thai people are now aware more on organic food, as consequence, there are a lot of organic food shop opening. Therefore, this is a good time to extend the organic line of product to some products that will give them a better health like natural detergent, soap, shampoo, etc. Green Life will be the retail shop, located in Sukumvit in Bangkok, that sell the natural product or organic products such as shampoo, soap, detergent, etc. We will focus more on the daily use products, instead of focus on selling food or raw foods ingredient. We will bring the international brands from all around the world to sell in Bangkok helping the customers in Thailand be easier to access these healthy products. We plan to bring 9 brands including Dr.oraganic, odylique, O'right, Natu, John master, LUSH, Palmer's, ECOS, and Greenshield, in total of 82 products. Our target is the middle income people in Thailand. With the initial investment of 5,808,550 THB without any debt, we expected the payback period of 1.5 years. Our gross margin would be approximately 15% in the third year. If the first shop works well, we would consider opening new shop, bringing more brand or products to our shop, and buying license from the brand and manufacturing in Thailand.

This thesis aims to review and analyze the scheduling problem in general and Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) in particular and the solution techniques applied to these problems. The JSSP is the most general and popular hard combinational optimization problem in manufacturing systems. For the past sixty years, an enormous amount of research has been carried out to solve these problems. The literature review showed the inherent shortcomings of solutions to scheduling problems. This has directed researchers to develop hybrid approaches, as no single technique for scheduling has yet been successful in providing optimal solutions to these difficult problems, with much potential for improvements in the existing techniques. The hybrid approach complements and compensates for the limitations of each individual solution technique for better performance and improves results in solving both static and dynamic production scheduling environments. Over the past years, hybrid approaches have generally outperformed simple Genetic Algorithms (GAs). Therefore, two novel priority heuristic rules are developed: Index Based Heuristic and Hybrid Heuristic. These rules are applied to benchmark JSSP and compared with popular traditional rules. The results show that these new heuristic rules have outperformed the traditional heuristic rules over a wide range of benchmark JSSPs. Furthermore, a hybrid GA is developed as an alternate scheduling approach. The hybrid GA uses the novel heuristic rules in its key steps. The hybrid GA is applied to benchmark JSSPs. The hybrid GA is also tested on benchmark flow shop scheduling problems and industrial case studies. The hybrid GA successfully found solutions to JSSPs and is not problem dependent. The hybrid GA performance across the case studies has proved that the developed scheduling model can be applied to any real-world scheduling problem for achieving optimal or near-optimal solutions. This shows the effectiveness of the hybrid GA in real-world scheduling problems. In conclusion, all the research objectives are achieved. Finaly, the future work for the developed heuristic rules and the hybrid GA are discussed and recommendations are made on the basis of the results.

<p>During the 1990s two contrasting paths to the organization of work have emerged in the Swedish engineering industry: the structure-conservative and structure-innovative. This thesis deals with the latter, and focuses primarily on necessary changes in management control systems that support structureinnovative forms of team-organized work. Three types of management control systems are studied in this thesis: performance management and measurement systems, systems for continuous improvements and wage systems.</p><p>The empirical base of this thesis consists of data from an exploratory survey study as well as a multiple case study.</p><p>On a general level, the survey study indicates a lack of congruence between structure and systems. Many companies seem to have started to move along the structure-innovative path but have not changed the management control systems accordingly. However, there are good reasons for doing so. The companies that have chosen the structure-innovative path perform better in terms of productivity, quality and cost reduction. These are also the companies that have changed their management control systems to the greatest extent.</p><p>The case study provides examples of how management control systems may be changed to fit structure-innovative forms of team-organized work. The main focus has been on the use of Balanced Scorecard. How a strategic continuous improvement capability was developed and sustained in the studied companies is illustrated. The findings extend previous research on new production concepts, which, this thesis argues, are not to be regarded as an issue of technology and vertical division of labour only, but also of supportive management control systems.</p> / QC 20100525

<p>The main objective of this thesis is to study how the structures of a sell dialog, via a web shop, should be designed in order to support and inspire the customer. To get the answer to this question I use a qualitative and quantitative method. The qualitative method is applied in connection with different interviews. The quantitative method is used to analyze different answers given from those who are interviewed. I also use the deductive method due to my interest of studying how reality can relate to the theories with the choice of the subject.</p><p>Moreover, this thesis is structured by three main perspectives; company, customers and techniques. The theoretical part of the thesis includes definitions and theories about electronic business, customers’ behaviour and technique, UML (Unified Modelling Language), which is a visual syntax for visualising, specifying, constructing and documenting system engineering, and UP (Unified Process), which is a method that complements UML. Furthermore, the empirical part of the thesis includes interviews with Chris Jangelöv and Patrik Cardell (Visma Spcs), who are representing the companys’ perspective on a sell dialog via a web shop. For the customers’ perspective on the subject, I collect and outline the interviews from Visma Spcs customers. Moreover, I review the interview with David Nadel, where he discusses the UML and UP techniques and also electronic business in general.</p><p>As for the results, I come to the conclusion that a web shop should be structured from a customer´s perspective and his/her inquiries concerning the products and services. UML and UP, however, are techniques that focus on the structuring of data and processes without taking the developing dialogue with the customer into serious account. These techniques do not address issues of why a web shop is used as it is, UML and UP only apply what a web shop can look like and how it could be used. Therefore, I argue that there is a lack of connection between the UML and UP techniques and the real live user and actual use. I also reached the conclusion that there should be three main building blocks when structuring a sell dialog via a web shop. These are; structure, information and navigation.</p>

Le contexte de notre travail s'intéresse à l'ordonnancement des activités de maintenance dans les systèmes de production. L'objectif de la thèse concerne l'élaboration de méthodes de résolution minimisant un critère regroupant les deux aspects production et maintenance. Les règles de priorité ainsi que les algorithmes génétiques ayant fait leur preuve dans le domaine seront à la base de notre étude. Etude faite tout d'abord sur un problème à une machine puis étendue au cas du Flow Shop. Notre contribution comporte tois volets. Le premier volet prend appui sur les solutions générées à l'aide d'une règle de dominance reliant les tâches de production et les tâches de maintenance. Le deuxième volet propose un algorithme par séparation et évaluation permettant de générer des ordonnancements de permutation du problème conjoint de la production et de la maintenance au sein du FLow Shop à deux machines. Le troisième volet étend l'étude au cas du Flow Shop à plusieurs machines. Nous proposons dans ce cas un algorithme génétique avec un codage approprié. Cet algorithme a l'avantage de balayer tout l'espace de recherche et par conséquent de générer des ordonnancements de très bonne qualité. Nous optons pour la maintenance préventive systématique pour l'appliquer dans notre étude. L'une des difficultés majeures de ce type de maintenance est le choix des périodes d'interventions optimales. Nous proposons dans ce cadre une méthode de choix de périodes systématiques.