Eftersom dagens kund är krävande och medveten om vad hon eller han vill ha är det viktigare än någonsin att verkligen förstå vad kunden verkligen efterfrågar. Ett företags returhantering kan därför ha avgörande betydelse då det gäller att samla in rätt information ifrån kunden med målet att minska framtida returer. Ett företags sätt att arbeta med returhantering är avgörande, detta är speciellt sant för företag inom e-handeln. Dessa företag kommer alltid att ha en viss retur nivå eftersom deras kunder använder sina hem som provrum eftersom det är svårt för kunderna att veta om plagget kommer att passa och motsvara deras förväntningar. Det är dock viktigt att jobba för att ha en så låg returandel som möjligt, för att också kunna ha nöjda kunder. Målet är att vara proaktiv och undvika returer. Detta är något som bör göras både långsiktigt och kortsiktigt i hela försörjningskedjan. Kundförståelse spelar också en stor roll i returhanteringen. Rätt information ska samlas in från kunderna, så att företaget kan bilda sig en uppfattning om kundernas behov och önskningar. Genom att skapa returkoder som ger en mer exakt bild av returanledningen kan denna information sedan användas i produktutvecklingen med målet att minimera framtida returer. Hänsyn behöver också tas till andra områden när man arbetar med att undvika returer. Kunden behöver till exempel få en klar bild av vad han eller hon köper, därför är det viktigt att produkten beskrivs på ett tydligt och lättförståelig vis. Det är också viktigt att måttlistor och måttinstruktioner är lätta att förstå och relatera till, så att kunden får möjligheten att välja rätt storlek. När man arbetar på ett bra sätt inom alla dessa områden kan man nå en högre avkastning genom ökad lojalitet från kunder och färre returer. / <p>As today’s customer is demanding and knows what he or she wants, it is more important than ever to really understand the customer’s true demand or need. A company’s returns management can therefore be crucial in order to gather the right information from the customer so that future returns can be minimized. A company’s work with returns management is very important, especially for companies within eCommerce. These types of companies will always have a certain level of returns, because the fact that the customers use their own homes as changing rooms. It is hard for the customer to know if the product will fit them and correspond to their expectations. It is although important to try to have as low return level as possible in order to have satisfied customers. The aim is to be proactive and avoid returns before they occur. This avoidance has to be considered both in short and long term ways within the whole supply chain.Consumer insight also plays an important role within returns management. It is here the right information should be collected from the customers in order to understand their wants and needs. By designing return codes that give a more precise picture of the return reason companies like Halens can use this information in the development process in order to minimize the risk for future returns.Also other areas within the business can be taken into consideration when working with returns avoidance. The customer needs to get a clear picture of what they actually are buying and therefore it is also important to describe the products in a clear and lucid way. It is also important to make measurement lists and instructions easy to understand and relate to, in order to give the customer the ability to choose the right size.When working efficiently within all these areas higher profit can be gained though increased customer loyalty and decreased returns.</p><p>Program: Magisterutbildning i Applied Textile Management</p>

Due to the universal nature of stress, and its impact on physical health, it is important to understand how it is related to other psychological variables. The current study was undertaken in order to investigate whether an individual's cardiovascular reactivity to stress is impacted by their level of experiential avoidance, as measured by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ-II). Individuals who are experientially avoidant are more likely to attempt to escape or prevent certain experiences and make effort to change them or avoid the contexts in which they occur. Previous research has indicated that experiential avoidance is related to some measures of physiological stress. One hundred twenty-eight college students (ages 18-29) were administered a questionnaire that included measures of general stress, experiential avoidance, and depression. After completing the questionnaire, a baseline reading of cardiovascular activity was taken. After that baseline reading, research assistants administered the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), a series of tasks designed to induce physiological stress that consists of an anticipation period, a speech, and a math task. Measurements of cardiovascular activity were taken throughout administration. It was hypothesized that increased experiential avoidance would predict higher blood pressure and heart rate both before engaging in the stress task. It was also hypothesized that increased experiential avoidance would predict higher cardiovascular reactivity during administration of the TSST. As was expected, higher experiential avoidance predicted higher baseline heart rate. This finding adds to the body of research that supports the connection between psychological constructs and physiological reactivity. However, experiential avoidance did not significantly predict baseline blood pressure or any measures of physiological reactivity during the TSST.

Mechanisms of change in psychotherapy must be empirically investigated to shed light on how particular therapies work, as well as common mechanisms that may be at work across modalities. The current study investigated a proposed mechanism of change in a mindfulness intervention; this proposed mechanism, experiential avoidance (EA), may function more broadly as a mediator of change across multiple therapies. The primary hypothesis was that gains in mindfulness over the course of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) would be associated with reductions in negative affect, and that changes in EA would mediate the relation between changes in mindfulness and negative affect. The role of EA in mediating the effect of mindfulness on positive affect, disability, and life satisfaction was also investigated. Participants (N = 106) completed questionnaires before and after an 8-week MBSR program. A subset of participants (n = 74) completed questionnaires at the mid-point of treatment, and recorded time spent on mindfulness practice and level of relaxation after homework completion. Mediation analyses were conducted in which relations between change in predictor (mindfulness), mediator (EA), and outcome measures over the course of the intervention were assessed using regression steps, followed by PRODCLIN. Participants reported significant improvements in mindfulness, reductions in EA and disability, and improved affect and life satisfaction from pre- to post-MBSR. The relation between increased mindfulness and reduced negative affect over the course of the intervention was partially mediated by reduced EA. No evidence was found for relaxation as an additional mediator of the relation between mindfulness and negative affect. The relation between increased mindfulness and positive affect over the course of the intervention was fully mediated by decreased behavioral avoidance. Reductions in behavioral avoidance also fully mediated the relation between increased mindfulness and reduced disability. The relation between increased mindfulness and increased life satisfaction was mediated by EA. More mindfulness practice was linked with greater positive affect; the relation between practice and positive affect was mediated by EA. This study offers support for EA as a mediator of the effect of mindfulness on multiple outcomes, while highlighting a mechanism of change that may pertain across psychotherapeutic modalities.

In today's digital (electronics) world, people's desire for electronic goods that ease their life at work, and leisure is increasing the complexity of the products of the embedded systems industry. For example, MP3 players for listening to music and cell phones for communicating with people.The gap between the hardware and software parts of embedded systems is being reduced by the use of System Level Design Languages (SLDL) that can model both hardware and software simultaneously. One such SLDL is SpecC.In this thesis, a SpecC model of a Real Time Operating System (RTOS) is constructed. It is shown how RTOS features can be incorporated into a SpecC model. The model is used to develop an application involving a robot avoiding obstacles to reach its destination. The RTOS model operates similar to the actual RTOS in the robot.The application includes a testbench model for the robot, including features such as interrupts, sonar sensors and wheel pulses, so that its operation closely resembles the actual robot. The sensor model is programmed to generate the values from the four sensor receivers, similar to the behaviour of the sensors on the actual robot. Also the pulses from the wheels and associated interrupts are programmed in the model so that it resembles the interrupts and wheel pulses present on actual robot.

This thesis presents an indoor obstacle avoidance system for car-like mobile robot. The system consists of stereo vision, map building, and path planning. Stereo vision is performed on stereo images to create a geometric map of the environment. A fast sparse stereo approach is employed. For different areas of the image there are different optimal values of disparity range. A multi-pass method to combine results at different disparity range is proposed. To reduce computational complexity the matching is limited to areas that are likely to generate useful data. The stereo vision system outputs a more complete disparity map. Abstract Map building involves converting the disparity map into map coordinates using triangulation and generating a list of obstacles. Occupancy grids are built to aid a hierarchical collision detection. The fast collision detection method is used by the path planner. Abstract A steering set path planner calculates a path that can be directly used by a car-like mobile robot. An adaptive approach using occupancy grid information is proposed to improve efficiency. Using a non-fixed steering set the path planner spends less computation time in areas away from obstacles. The path planner populates a discrete tree to generate a smooth path. Two tree population methods were trialled to execute the path planner. The methods are implemented and experimented on a real car-like mobile robot.

In June 2007, the Court of Appeal in New Zealand disallowed the taxpayers appeal and decided that Trinity Scheme is a tax avoidance arrangement. The decision is significant not only for NZD3billion which is at stake but also for its jurisprudence on tax avoidance. This paper analyses the implication of Accent decision on the development of judicial approach on tax avoidance. Purposive approach of interpretation is codified in New Zealand since mid-19th century. Although New Zealand courts are not reluctant in using purposive approach in judicial reasoning, the final decisions rarely depart from literal meaning of the Act. The tension between general anti-avoidance provision and the specific provision within the Act has long been recognised by the court. The Court of Appeal in Accent proposed a judicial technique which would involve seeing tax avoidance cases in three different categories.

An efficient algorithm which finds collision free paths for a manipulator with 5 or 6 revolute joints is described. It solves the problem for four degree of freedom pick and place operations. Examples are given of paths found by the algorithm in tightly cluttered workspaces. The algorithm first describes free space in two ways: as freeways for the hand and payload ensemble and as freeways for the upperarm. Freeways match volumes swept out by manipulator motions and can be "inverted" to find a class of topologically equivalent path segments. The two freeway spaces are searched concurrently under projection of constraints determined by motion of the forearm.

A hierarchical representation for configuration space is presented, along with an algorithm for searching that space for collision-free paths. The detail of the algorithm are presented for polygonal obstacles and a moving object with two translational and one rotational degrees of freedom.

This paper deals with the class of problems that involve finding where to place or how to move a solid object in the presence of obstacles. The solution to this class of problems is essential to the automatic planning of manipulator transfer movements, i.e. the motions to grasp a part and place it at some destination. This paper presents algorithms for planning manipulator paths that avoid collisions with objects in the workspace and for choosing safe grasp points on objects. These algorithms allow planning transfer movements for Cartesian manipulators. The approach is based on a method of computing an explicit representation of the manipulator configurations that would bring about a collision.

This paper will consider how regulatory arbitrage contributed to the 2007-2009 financial crisis (the “financial crisis”). In particular, the paper will establish how the avoidance of regulatory capital requirements by large and complex financial institutions (“LC financial institutions”) severely worsened the financial crisis, necessitating a massive rent extraction from U.S. taxpayers. In doing to, the paper will examine the regulatory arbitrage perpetrated by American International Group and the subsequent U.S. taxpayer bailout of that firm. Because of the enormous amount of sovereign credit that had to be substituted for private capital during the financial crisis the paper assumes that the net negative nature of regulatory avoidance by LC financial institutions is axiomatic. Therefore, the paper advances several possible reform measures that could eventually be implemented into a new legal framework to confront the problems that are posed by the avoidance of financial services regulations.