In today’s competitive automotive market, many of the world’s leading organizations utilize the Lean manufacturing philosophy in order to increase productivity and stay competitive. With this philosophy come many great methods for improving processes, where focus is put on reducing or eradicating any actions or process that fail to create value for customers, the so-called waste. However, one question that remains is how fast a process actually can be. Having “40% waste”, how can one know if this is the endpoint of a successful efficiency improvement journey, or if the waste can be reduced all the way down to 0%? This Master thesis seeks to identify where this endpoint is located for a specific design of the product, aiming to help organizations allocate improvement work to where it does the greatest impact. Hence, knowing if the endpoint for a process already is reached, organizations can steer improvement work to R&D departments instead of trying to improve something not capable of improving. The findings show that organizations can use the results from this study in more than just one context. Not only will it complement the Lean philosophy by providing a measure of the absolute shortest durations for each individual activity or process under ideal conditions, but also will it facilitate communication between R&D and assembly departments at an earlier stage of the development process by quantifying the impact of different design choices on the total assembly time.

The development of a global model incorporating Climate, Land, Energy and Water (CLEW) parameters and interconnections was undertaken using the Open Source Energy Modelling SYStem. The model was to be a simplistic representation of the nexus systems and include the most relevant mechanisms between them. Two separate modules on land use and materials were created and combined with an already existing energy module. Water and climate parameters were added to all modules and they were combined to the global CLEWs Base model. Three scenarios were run on the separate sector modules and the combined model. Results from the comparison of the separate and combined modules indicate that the CLEW approach is applicable even on a simplistic, highly aggregated scale. Differences in resource allocation were observed when the same parameters were run in the single sector modules and in the combined base model. However, to make the model provide a representative image of global resource conditions additional data and parameters will be required. The resulting global CLEWs model provides a wide range of potential applications and can be easily expanded. As an open source tool it could act as an educational instrument or for policy support and be adapted to different geographical boundaries and detail.

Sammanfattning Genom att implementera kontinuerligt förbättringsarbete skapas möjligheter för utveckling av företaget. Det är viktigt att följa den globalt fluktuerande efterfrågan för att kunna bemöta kundens krav och differentiera sig ifrån dess konkurrenter. Dock är en implementering av förbättringsprogram komplext och sätter höga krav på organisationen. Detta tvingar ansvariga till att ha förståelse, kunskap och drivkraft för konceptet.   Denna studie baseras på hur Posten AB i Sverige ställer sig till förbättringsarbete. Idag använder sig företaget utav stödsystem C2 för att underlätta och skapa systematik i deras förbättringsarbete. Genom att analysera statistik i C2 indikerar det till lågt antal registrerade förslag i jämförelse med antal anställda på de olika enheterna som valts att studeras. Därför undersöker studien vilka faktorer som grundar till den låga registreringen utav förslag. För att öka förståelsen för området har efterforskning inom teorin utförts. Teorin fokuserar på faktorer som påverkas vid implementering utav ett förbättringsprogram. Rapporten är en empirisk studie baserad på intervjuer och en enkätstudie. Elva intervjuer har genomförts, tre ifrån huvudkontoret med ansvar för förbättringar och utveckling. De övriga åtta intervjuerna har genomförts med chefer och ledare utifrån olika enheter runt Stockholmsområdet. Enkätstudien delades ut till medarbetare inom de åtta enheterna. För att besvara den första forskningsfrågan angående vilka barriärer som ligger bakom den låga registreringen av förbättringsarbete i System C2 konstaterades huvudsakligen sju faktorer till ett lågt registrerande. Dessa faktorer är: Hanteraförbättringar – förbättringsprocesser Utbildning Mål Avsatt tid Nyckelpersoner Registrera alla förslag Visuell arbetsprocess   I resultatet beskrivs även förslag till hur Posten kan undgå dessa faktorer.

Virtual reality (VR) is not part of the curriculum of explosives for the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) today. According to the research department at the Swedish EOD and Demining Centre (SWEDEC), this study is the first step in introducing VR to modernize the educational system for explosives within the SAF. This study investigates why VR is not used as a complement in the education of explosives for the SAF and finds the potential benefits and risks of implementing it. Qualitative data was collected through the survey method `case study research' where experts in the field of explosives tried a VR prototype made specifically for this study before being interviewed. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the results from the interviews.This study shows that VR is not part of the curriculum of explosives today because the older generation who decides either has a reluctant mindset or lacks the knowledge and awareness to see what it has to offer. The interviewees agree on the potential benefits of implementing VR in this field, the main benefits are cost reduction, safety, and logistics.  If the quality of the program is poor, the safety aspect and learning behaviors could be jeopardized because a user is treating the program like a game. To implement VR as a complement in the education of explosives for the SAF has more potential benefits than potential risks, and the potential risks can be reduced by using a program with quality assurance. There is an overwhelming interest among the interviewees where all participants agree that the education in explosives could benefit from implementing VR.

China already has the highest numbe of,and largest cities in its history. According to recent statistics, Chinese cities were home to 52.6% of China’s total population at the end of 2012. If the current trend holds, it is predicted that by 2025 the Chinese urban population will be over 1 billion including eight megacities, each with a population of over 10 million. Urbanisation is part of a central strategy of the Chinese Government to aid development and gradually raise welfare standards. Meanwhile, environmental problems in China are getting more severe which now threatens the balance of sustainable development. To address the environmental challenges caused by and in cities and to balance its economic growth with social and environmental aspects, China has made itself a vast living laboratory for sustainable urban development approaches. Many city concepts such as green city, garden city, and eco-city and low-carbon city have been promoted and put into practicein the past two decades at different levels and scales. The reasons why so many concepts have been used in China are: the vague definition of sustainable development; different governmental departments have been engaged in promoting different concepts each with a different focus; the concept itself evolved over time. One common feature of these concepts is that none of them is well defined. However, there is a clear trend that the concepts are becoming more comprehensive regarding their coverage of more aspects of sustainability. Case analysis of the more popular concepts eco-city, low-carbon city, low-carbon eco-city, eco-civilization, and other experiences show, that the lack of definition of the concepts proves important barriers in practice. It’s not possible to clearly define these concepts because they are more or less value based, but it is desirable to develop more scientifically based frameworks within which urban planning can be carried out. Another barrier is that urban planning in China is implemented with a confused backdrop of a state operating somewhere between the old Soviet style of centralized planning and a growing market economy. Concepts like low-carbon and eco-city are introduced top-down and are hardly understood among local planners. There is also a danger that market actors make fundamental changes in well-developed plans during the implementation phase. In this thesis acase study carried out in the city of Xuzhou has shown that a process oriented and simpler framework for eco-city development with a clear focus on resource efficiency can be applied in a Chinese context. A three level approach has been used in order to escape from the trap of trying to find exact definitions for the concepts used in China. Depending on the ambition level chosen by acity, different planning methods should be applied and different sets of indicators should be chosen. What is needed in order to move forward in China is a more participatory planning structure at local levels including the public and NGOs. This is because of the values included in sustainability frameworks. If the development of a framework is not anchored in a broad participatory process, the likelihood of success is lessened. There is little evidence of such development in China today particularly when lack of legislation making local engagement in environmental issues more difficult. Takingin to account the subjective nature of sustainability frameworks, it is also clear that China has to develop its own narratives for sustainable urban development based on its own culture. The application of more or less ready-made western countries solutions for urban development has not been very successful in China. Looking into the future we can see that the global need for resources will grow in an almost uncontrolled way for several reasons and there are no signs that this phenomenon will phase out. This raises the question: is development based on ecological modernisation theory, which means we can decouple economic growth from environmental degradation by applying new technologies and system thinking, a feasible way forward, or do we need to find new more radical ways to change the urban metabolism based on totally new narratives for the future. The challenge for Industrial Ecology will be to tie together industrial metabolism with urban metabolism into models for increasing resource efficiency in the overall metabolism, including the use of natural resources from agriculture, forestry, mining and harvesting of resources from sea. Another challenge will be to connect awareness to action and find ways to see how results from Industrial Ecology methods can be used in practice in cooperation with actors in society. Industrial Ecologycan develop into more of a science for decision support in the planning of sustainable urban development. However new research as well as new methods is needed to handle the complex issues of the normative component in frameworks for sustainability and for expanding the thinking around ecological modernisation. Research in developing quantitative metabolic models hasto be complemented with the formulation of research questions together with practitioners and other disciplines (like urban planning, ecology, and social science) in how to promote more radical changes in urban metabolism. This will need the establishment of many movements in society aiming to formulate new narratives for the future. There are examples of such movements forchanging consumption patterns in society e.g. collaborative consumption, which is an economic model based on sharing, trading, borrowing or lending instead of owning. The Industrial Ecology community should have an overall vision to bridge the gap between science and practice toward sustainable futures for our society. Development of ideas to this end will be the focus of the next step in my research towards my Ph Dthesis. This will include qualitative eco-cycle models for more effective utilization of material and energy in the societal metabolism as well as new socio-technical models for integration of these models into urban planning routines. / <p>QC 20140212</p>

Our society is all the more shifting towards focusing on the impact that we have on the world’s climate and reducing our environmental impact is getting increasingly popular. Amongst efforts to reduce the impact of the products that we use, the field of Circular Design has emerged as a solution that tackles the problem at its roots in a holistic way, aiming to not only reduce the climate impact of products, but to transition our entire society into a sustainable one through the implementation of a Circular Economy. This ideal economic state is structured around ensuring that products are not simply produced, used and then discarded, but instead that the value of products are never lost. This is done by circulating them in different stages, ensuring that they are reused by other people, refurbished to a good condition, remanufactured as a new product, or that their materials are recycled and used in other products. This holistic approach currently seems to be the most viable for transitioning our society into one structured around sustainability.   In the midst of the increasing interest in sustainability, companies are starting the move towards implementing changes with this in mind. In the electric guitar industry, .strandberg* stands out as one of the more well-known brands that is doing just that, by introducing product design changes to their electric guitars with the goal of reducing material waste and moving away from materials that are becoming scarce in the world. This can be seen as a first step towards changing the entire industry, that is currently focusing mostly on constantly manufacturing new products, to one that focuses on the value of existing products and how to maintain this for as long as possible. The electric guitar as a product is one that commonly sees several users during its lifetime already, and those with high degrees of quality and performance, such as .strandberg*’s products, can potentially be used and kept in a functional state indefinitely. As such, introducing Circular Design to this product category stands as a challenge.   During the course of this thesis project, the process of Design Thinking and the skillset of an Industrial Design Engineer has been used to take on this challenge of Circular Design applied to the electric guitar. Current circular products have been analyzed to find success factors, inspiration and knowledge of the implications that Circular Design has on product development. The work included a comprehensive literature review of the field to take part of the existing academic knowledge, contextual and user research to understand the current situation as well as the needs of the relevant user group, idea generation to find innovative solutions, visual prototyping of concepts and the use of evaluative methods to understand how well the solutions would work.   The final results of the project ended up being more theoretical than anticipated, as it was found that .strandberg*’s products in their design already fit many of the criteria for circular products. Instead, a circular business model system (CBMS) was developed, that details a process wherein .strandberg*’s newly produced as well as existing products can circulate through a sequence of users, while also incentivizing these users to take care of their products and ensure that their functional service life is maximized. The CBMS stands as a broader value offering to both .strandberg* as a company and to the users of their products.   Recommendations for future work with the CBMS includes testing alternative material choices with physical prototypes, launching the model at a small scale to investigate its validity and work out eventual problems as well as to build partnerships with actors, either on a small but potentially on a global scale, to be able to implement aspects of the CBMS.

The security directives at Ericsson Group IT have recently been re-worked to apply to modern security requirements. For Ericsson's software development teams developing internal applications, security tools have been implemented into the daily workflow to follow these new directives. Before, security mainly was considered during the reviews and scheduled assessments of the software projects. The goal of these new tools is to add security to every part of the software development process. Security thus adds to the scope of work of the developers at Ericsson Group IT, which has, in the past, evolved from being solely a developer to being responsible for development and operations to development, security and operations. However, adding methods and tools to the developer's workflow can create inertia and friction in daily work. We intend to apply the concept of inertia to agile work practices to examine how small-scale projects are affected when new security tools and methods are introduced and implemented in the agile workflow. Research suggests that linked processes and methods should be put in place to achieve desirable results from the implemented tools and be integrated into the team's agile methodologies. The thesis aims to identify the factors that affect inertia by investigating and analysing the developers' use of methods and tools. As for data collection, a pilot study and a case study were applied to a team at Ericsson Group IT. The data was collected through qualitative surveys conducted on twelve proven factors regarding successfulness in work implementations. The data was then analysed through the Gioia methodology by compiling the collected data into first-order concepts and linking them to familiar second-order themes. These themes were then translated into aggregate dimensions synthesised from the study's theoretical framework. The results showed that several factors affected the change process: personnel training and education, appropriate communication, and adaptability to the change process. These are all factors attributing inertia to the change process, and awareness of these can help mitigate and facilitate a successful change process. Streamlining successful change processes is vital when integrating security as a requirement into an agile software development team.

The wastewater industry is critical for both current and future human life. At the same time, competitive conditions of market spaces lead to technology evolution reaching continuously new frontiers. While many wastewater treatment plants are designed identically in different global loci, wastewater characteristics are unique and therefore decisions related to wastewater treatment technologies are very critical. Wastewater characteristics vary due to cultural and climate factors, among other things and thus, each wastewater treatment technology must be studied independently. Hence, decision analysis and decision making are an integral part of the industry. A multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been applied in this thesis, including a fictional decision-making problem. Furthermore, this thesis describes an analytic approach to a complex decision-making problem in wastewater treatment by using multi attribute utility theory (MAUT). This thesis assigns utility values, applies Swing Weighting (SW) which is not commonly used in the wastewater industry and assesses weight coefficients for the utility functions for each criterion. The goal is to illustrate how proportional scoring can be used to assign utility values in different aspects related to wastewater treatment, how SW can be performed to assess weight coefficients that are related to wastewater treatment and finally how the additive utility can be applied to deliver the total utility. For this reason, a hypothetical decision problem was developed, in which, the decision maker can select amongst three different wastewater treatment technologies using sustainability criteria. This is a multi-dimensional problem that requires the use of a structured approach to analyze the options accordingly. More, six criteria are used to rank three different wastewater treatment technologies with respect to sustainability. Finally, the MCDA results from this hypothetical decision problem show how proportional scoring, SW, and the additive utility could be used in the selection of a wastewater treatment technology however it should be tested with real life decision problems.

I detta arbete har det undersökts om vilka åtgärder som är möjliga och rimliga för en privatperson att vidta för att säkra de onlinetjänster som de använder sig av i vardagen. Fortsättningsvis undersökt hur säkerhetsmedvetna individer faktiskt är, när det kommer till dessa onlinetjänster. En litteraturstudie kom fram till att enklare åtgärder likt lösenordshanterare och tvåfaktorsautentisering är enkla och effektiva åtgärder för en privatperson i syfte att skydda deras onlinetjänster. Via en enkätstudie kunde slutsatsen dras att mindre än hälften av svaren visar på ett säkerhetsmedvetet beteende vilket skulle kunna innebära en öppning för olika typer av IT-incidenter. Samtidigt går det att se ett positivt samband mellan säkerhetsmedvetna val och den respondentens upplevda säkerhetsmedvetenhet och IT-kompetens, vilket indikerar på att utbildning och information har en positiv inverkan på säkerhetsmedvetenheten kring onlinetjänster och de åtgärder som kan vidtas för att skydda dessa.

According to EU small and medium sized enterprises is the backbone of the European economy. These entrepreneurial companies driven by entrepreneurship are in a constant move of development and growth. To be able to manage and encourage the state of growth the company need to developed or apply an already existing, management system. The meaning of this report is to examine the benefits of applying the management system, “Offensiv Kvalitetesutveckling”, working with development procject. The used method is an empirical examination of the process of developing a model for process measurement and a general model for improvement projects. It results in the presentation of a model for process measurement and a general model for improvement projects, which can be combined and applied on warehouse processes. The finding is that the values of “Offensiv kvalitetsutveckling” are beneficial for the small and medium sized company. The models presented are useful when customized to the specific process / Enligt EU är små och medelstora företag ryggraden i europeisk ekonomi. Dessa företag som drivs av entreprenörskap drivs av ständig utveckling och tillväxt. För att ha möjlighet att styra företagen och uppmuntra tillväxt finns behovet att utveckla och implementera nya eller redan befintliga ledningssystem. Syftet med rapporten är att undersöka fördelarna med att implementera ledningssystemet ”Offensiv kvalitetsutvecklings”, värderingar och arbetssätt i arbetet med att utveckla en mätmodell för processer samt en generell modell för utvecklingsprojekt för ett mindre företags räkning. Rapporten tillämpar en empirisk undersökningsmetod på utvecklingsprocessen. Arbetet resulterar i en modell som kan användas för att mäta prestationen i lagerhanteringsprocessen samt en generell modell för utvecklingsprojekt. Dessa modeller är framtagna för att kombineras med varandra för bästa effekt. Rapportens slutsats är att de värderingar som ”Offensiv kvalitetsutveckling” vilar på bidrar positivt till utvecklingsprocessen. Samt att de modeller som presenteras är användbara då de anpassas utifrån den rådande situationen.