The forestry industry played an important role in the industrialization of the Swedish economy in the late 19th century. The aim of this study is to deed with the determination of income and wages in the forestry regions where the sawmills and pulp industries found their raw material supplies.The formation of incomes and wages for lumberjacks and drivers is analysed in the Parish of Jokkmokk in the far north of Sweden for the period 1878 to 1938. The number of workers engaged in forestry is also estimated as is the total labour supply in the parish.Technological development and productivity in felling and transportation are analysed. This part of the study covers the period 1880 to the present, and includes log-driving activities on the Lule River from 1881 to 1977.Briefly, the findings of the study are that income, timber prices and wages in forestry in the parish fluctuated together with exports of forestry products, particularly pulp after the year 1910. Estimates also show that troughs were deeper and booms more marked in the study area than in the overall market for forestry products measured both in volume and in export value.Labour productivity in felling and transport showed a rising tendency in the last two decades of the 19th century, which reflects the replacement of the axe as the only instrument for felling by the two-man timber saw. Better horses, fodder and sledges also raised efficiency.However, during the first half of the 20th century, labour productivity was markedly stagnant. Improvements in equipment, such as better steel in the saws, even stronger horses and so on, could not compensate for circumstances such as longer transporting distances and more cutting in the forests with lower volume per tree.These latter tendencies reflect a growing shortage of raw materials which the Swedish forestry industries had to face from about the turn of the century. Not until about 1955, when tractors replaced horses and the power saw replaced the one-man timber saw, did productivity rise substantially. Over a period of fifteen to twenty years, forestry work became almost completely mechanized.The labour force in the Parish of Jokkmokk was over 2,000 men in the boom of the 1930s. Today, the labour force is a steady 250 or so. The technological change in the 1960s was, of course, an adjustment to the extremely high labour costs in the Swedish post-war economy.In industry, a continuous adjustment to the factor proportions in the economy had taken place. In forestry, adjustment took place over a very short period of time after decades of stagnation from the technological point of view. Institutional, social and technical obstacles had delayed adjustments earlier. A totally new organization within forestry work was required before new techniques could be introduced. These were not applicable to older organization forms based on part-time farmers, part-time foresters. / digitalisering@umu

The aim of this thesis has been to study and analyse in detail the process by which timber floating in tributaries was phased out. The region covered is that of the Ume and Vindel rivers and the period studied is 1945-70. The years I945-60 have been the most central to the analysis. The approach taken was to study timber floating itself rather than the new transport alternative (lorries) which developed during the post-war period. This brought the increasing costs of timber floating in tributaries into the forefront of the investigation, along with the efforts made to restrain these by means of investment in and partial closure of the floatway network. The consequences in terms of changed labour demand are also discussed. An important part of the analysis has been to examine the inherent weaknesses of timber floating in tributaries and the internal driving forces underlying its phasing-out. The term "internal driving forces" connotes those forces which affected timber floating as a means of transport by causing its costs to rise. In other words it has not been a matter of looking at the direct competition from lorry transport and the advantages of the new transport technique but rather of identifying the drawbacks of floating, when, where and how they arose, and how they helped to make it relatively dearer, thus motivating the changeover to lorry transport. The internal driving forces were forest structure and labour costs. When labour costs incurred in timber floating in tributaries were rising rapidly and the dimensions of the logs became smaller in size, floating became a dearer transport solution than before. As regards changes in forest structure, the dimensions of logs were diminishing throughout the floating epoch. This meant that the risk of sinking during floating increased. The effect of this was that the need to bark the timber was increasing all the time, which in turn entailed an indirect transport cost for floating. In addition to this, smaller log dimensions affected the labour time and cost of floating. The changed labour conditions along with the changed forest structure showed the importance of studying structural change in the Norrland forest region. For during the later 1940s and early 1950s a shortage of labour presented itself, and the cause was to be found in the new job opportunities which were emerging, some in the rural areas, for example in the construction of hydro-electric powerplants, and some in the larger populated localities, and these factors taken together made recruitment for jobs in forestry and timber floating more difficult. One of the chief characteristics of the way events were moving was that recruitment shifted away from having mainly targeted the agrarian lower class of smallholders, crofters and leaseholders so that it now focused increasingly on freehold farmers while at the same time the recruitment base, having previously consisted of younger workers, was now composed mainly of older people. Also in this study, various factors have been examined which could conceivably explain the changes in productivity of timber floating in tributaries. The results show, for example, that during the 1950s a partial phasing-out had very small direct effects on productivity in the area studied. Thus the combination of investment and changes in the quantity of timber is the factor which best explains the differences between different tributaries in the trend of productivity. A tributary´s greater capacity to float timber did not necessarily signify a bigger labour requirement since to a certain extent the watercourse itself “did the job”. As regards investment, clearance operations using caterpillar tractors were probably very important. It is true that the genuine dependence of log driving in tributaries on nature influenced conditions varied strongly from year to year, but since the link between investment costs and the trend of productivity is significant, it still seems reasonable to draw the conclusion that investment lent impetus to the rise in productivity during the 1950s. / digitalisering@umu

This report discusses different steps of the product development of a new tool belt, for the company Husqvarna Group, to be used by professional forestry workers. From identifying the customers’ needs through field studies and inter-views with different users, to a substantial solution to the problem. The introduction states the purpose of the report, the research questions that this report is discussing, and also the delimitations that have been made. The report is focused on finding a new and better solution than the current one to attaching holsters on the tool belt, but also how detachable braces can be attached to the belt. Husqvarna and their current tool belt, is covered along with the main com-petitors’ tool belts. Then follows a chapter with theoretical background there the QFD method and Pugh’s decision matrix are described which are later used in the report. There is also a description of how the work in the forest is being done and how the tool belt is used. In the method chapter a time plan is established for the project’s different phases. After that the QFD method is used along with a house of quality to identify the customers’ needs and to rank the customers’ requirements and create engineering specifications to make the requirements measureable. The house of quality in-cludes an analysis of the competitors compared to the current tool belt from Husqvarna. A number of different concepts are included to solve the two prob-lems, fastener for holsters and braces are produced and are evaluated against the set requirements with the help of Pugh’s decision matrix. A “proof of concept” prototype is then produced from the final concept. A summary of the opportunities for improvements on the current tool belt is dis-played in the result chapter. There is a presentation of the final concept and the corresponding prototype. The concept for attaching the holsters includes a plastic band with holes that is attached in its lower edge so it can be folded down. Behind the plastic band, and through the holes, flies from the holsters are threaded. The plastic band and the holster flies is then covered and secured by a fabric band that is sewn onto the belt in the upper end and attached to the belt with snap fasteners in the lower end. Finally there is a chapter with conclusions, where the methods and the results are discussed and there are suggestions on how the work should be further continued. / Denna rapport behandlar olika steg inom produktframtagning av ett nytt verktygs-bälte för professionella skogsarbetare åt företaget Husqvarna Group. Från att identifiera kundens behov genom fältstudier samt intervjuer med olika användare, till en konkret lösning på problemet. Introduktionskapitlet klargör syftet med rapporten, de frågeställningar rapporten diskuterar och vilka avgränsningar som gjorts. Rapporten fokuserar på att hitta en ny och bättre lösning än den nuvarande för att fästa hölster på verktygsbältet och även hur avtagbara hängslen ska fästas i bältet. Företaget Husqvarna och deras nu-varande verktygsbälte och huvudkonkurrenternas bälten beskrivs. Sedan följer ett kapitel med teoretisk bakgrund där QFD-metoden och Pughs beslutsmetod besk-rivs som senare används i rapporten. En beskrivning av hur arbetet i skogen går till och hur verktygsbältet används finns också med. I kapitlet metod upprättas en tidsplan för projektets olika faser. Därefter används QFD-metoden och ett kvalitetshus för att identifiera kundens behov och för att få en rangordning av kundkraven samt skapa ingenjörsmässiga mätvärden på kraven. Kvalitetshuset innehåller även en konkurrensanalys där det nuvarande bältet jäm-förs med konkurrenternas. Ett antal olika koncept för att lösa de två problemen, fäste för hölster och hängslen, tas fram och utvärderas mot uppställda krav med hjälp av Pughs beslutsmatris. En “proof of concept” prototyp tas sedan fram av det valda konceptet. En sammanställning av förbättringsmöjligheterna på det nuvarande verktygsbältet läggs fram i kapitlet resultat. Där presenteras det slutliga konceptet och prototypen av det. Konceptet för att fästa hölstren är ett hålat plastband som fästs på bältet i underkanten av plastbandet så att det kan vikas ner. Bakom plastbandet och ge-nom hålet träs flärpar från hölstret, det hela täcks och säkras med ett textilband som är fastsytt i överkant och med tryckknappar i underkant. Avslutningsvis finns ett kapitel med slutsatser, där metoderna och resultaten dis-kuteras och där ges förslag på hur arbetet bör tas vidare.