This thesis aims at investigating how the supply chain management (SCM) practices of large enterprises (LEs) are utilized on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This has been argued by many authors as a gap in previous literature. Take the view from SMEs, the research questions are: Is it possible to increase the performance of SMEs in the supply chain of LEs? and How does the supply chain strategy of LEs and business strategy of SMEs match? They are all answered by an explorative case study research. A mature supplier in production services for its large customers is used as case in this exploratory case study. Semi-structured interview was carried out as the main way to collect necessary data, besides documentation and observation. The study presents the existing interaction and problems with the SME, encountered how it formulates business strategy and the lessons that can be learned. The research shows that communication is a key tool ensuring the efficiency of supply chain cooperation as perceived seriously by the SME. Besides, group communication is becoming more popular and efficient for partners in the supply chain due to the participation of multiple staffs in the projects and the issues need to be discussed and agreed among them. Although LEs have good impacts on SME’s performance, for example in delivery proportion and technical ability, the deeper kinds of interaction such as exchange of personnel, committed resources investment was not found in the cooperation. Generally, the SME perceives that the usual difficulties they confront are less bargaining power, barriers to satisfy new demands from customers and the changing in customers’ decisions. By carefully analyzing the characteristics of the SME, we suggest possible solutions such as being more active in deeper kinds of interaction with LEs, increase negotiation skills, constructing a separated unit responsible for SCM and establishing a long-term business strategy to ease these difficulties. Taking business strategy of SMEs as an object of the research, we found main parameters the company cares about to formulate its business strategy. Comparing with literature, we suggest the company paying attention in activities of competitive market as well as the ways to take advantage of supply chain management strategies of LEs when SMEs building their business strategy.

Due to the globalization trend, the internationalization of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has become a common practice in the last decades. The New Product Development (NPD) is recognized as innovative value creating effort that has become important in the high-risk, globally competitive environment, and small firms seem to be more effective in utilizing product design and manufacturing involvement, while large firms standardize and formalize the product development practices. Thus, the main focus of this research study is the NPD capabilities and the internationalization process. The main research question focuses on whether and how the NPD capabilities influence the internationalization process of the companies in the health industry. A qualitative study is carried out to answer the research question by interviewing three Swedish companies in the health industry. The empirical findings and analysis conclude that the NPD capabilities and the internationalization process go along with each other and they are both dependant. There is a positive relationship between the NPD capabilities and the internationalization process, but it is not yet defined which one has a greater influence.

Background: Development of technologies and worldwide reductions of trade barriers during the last decades increased competition and the need to offer high-quality prod-ucts and services for a reasonable price. Particularly, the service sector increased in size and variety of outputs. The development of the information technology segment has de-termined the market environment. To be able to compete in this global market offshore outsourcing of IT functions can be a valuable tool if handled in the right way. Small and medium sized enterprises can profit from service offshore outsourcing although studies show that this type of organizations fail in their outsourcing initiatives in an above aver-age rate as a result of deficits in risk management, precisely in risk identification. Aim: The aim of this Master Thesis is to analyse the specific characteristics of small and medium sized enterprises in order to find out how they impact the different stages of the service offshore outsourcing process. Theory and empirical data helps to spot strengths and weaknesses of these organizations in order to find a solution to a better risk identification process which then might lead to increased success in offshore out-sourcing of services. Definitions: Service offshore outsourcing refers to the purchase of a service (which may have been produced in-house before) by a firm from a supplier located in a differ-ent country while the supplier and buyer keep their respective initial locations. Risk is the potential that a chosen action or activity leads to an undesirable outcome. Risk iden-tification, the first part of risk management (followed by risk assessment and prioritiza-tion), is defined as an analysis of potential risk factors to the success of an endeavour. Completion and results: Specific characteristics of small and medium sized enterprises play a significant role in the risk identification process of service offshore outsourcing. By being aware of these risks and acting according to minimize them, harm can be pre-vented. Especially, a well-designed service offshore outsourcing contract, regular com-munication and personal relationships could be an advantage to overcome the draw-backs of small size, high dependency, need for flexibility and lack of resources.

Det här arbetet är en magisteruppsats inom företagsekonomi. Studien behandlar samarbetsrelationer mellan svenska bornglobalföretag och indiska partner på plats i Indien utifrån en kulturell aspekt. Utgångspunkten är de svenska bornglobalföretagens perspektiv. Studiens objekt: Vi har fyra studieobjekt: Indpro AB är ett företag inom IT-branschen, Duràn Textiles AB och JMQ Sarees är företag inom olika delar av textilbranschen, Swedasia Travels HB är ett företag inom resebranschen. Alla fyra företag är svenska små bornglobalföretag som har nära samarbete med Indien på olika sätt. Studiens syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att analysera vilka kulturella betingelser svenska bornglobalföretag stöter på i samarbetet med indiska aktörer och hur de svenska företagen hanterar dessa. Metod: Arbetet är baserat på en kvalitativ undersökning. Undersökningen gjordes med fyra fallföretag som utgör studiens objekt. Sammanlagt gjorde vi sex intervjuer. Teorival: Denna studie har integrerat tre teoretiska områden: Den första behandlar bornglobal som fenomen, den andra behandlar kulturen och dess olika aspekter och den tredje behandlar kommunikation som en del av kulturen. Slutsatser: Svenska bornglobalföretag som samarbetar med indiska aktörer agerar på en marknad som är relativ bekant för dem utifrån grundarens tidigare erfarenhet. Trots det upplever de svårigheter i samarbetet med de indiska aktörerna p.g.a. kulturella olikheter som påverkar arbetsprocesserna och kommunikationsflödet mellan de indiska och de svenska företagen. Tack vare sin storlek är bornglobalföretag relativt flexibla och kan därmed lättare anpassa sig till en ny kultur. Avsaknaden av stort kapital kompenseras med utvecklandet av nära och djupa relationer till sina indiska partners. Kommunikationen mellan svenska bornglobalföretag och de indiska samarbetsaktörerna underlättas av möjligheterna som Internet erbjuder vilket gör att det fysiska avståndet inte är något hinder för ”här-och-nu”- kommunikation. Grundaren av ett bornglobalföretag agerar som en frontfigur för företaget och har en nyckelroll vid hanteringen av kulturella skillnader.

Background: Today’s business environment is characterized by fast-changing technologies and shorter product life-cycles, well-educated customers and fierce competition. Within this context, agile manufacturing is praised in the literature as one of the solutions for achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage in turbulent times. Aim: The purpose of this master thesis is to fill in the identified theoretical and empirical gaps by exploring and scrutinizing the relevancy of the agile manufacturing concept in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the computer, electronic and optical manufacturing industry in Sweden. Furthermore, a model illustrating the agile manufacturing enablers applied in the selected industry will be developed. Definition: Agile manufacturing can be defined as a new production concept integrating employees, suppliers and customers, as well as units of production by using the support of software and communication systems. Methodology: Eight interviews with managers have been conducted in order to capture the big picture of how the SMEs in the chosen industry enable responsiveness to changes. A survey answered by 50 SMEs within the same industry was carried out in order to test the interview findings on a larger scale and to provide the basis for a further comparison with the existing agile manufacturing body of knowledge Results: Agile manufacturing is indeed relevant in the studied industry as it is driven by agility drivers and thus characterized by fast-changing technologies and well-educated customers. However, the agile manufacturing enablers partly differ from the ones praised in the literature and are more adjusted to the size and characteristics of SMEs. Nevertheless, a conscious awareness of the agile manufacturing concept itself was not found and the enablers identified were rather described as logical business thinking.

Not many of the abundant freshwater bacterial groups have a representative cultured isolate. In this master thesis project, some abundant bacterioplankton from two lakes (Lake Ekoln and Lake Erken) could be isolated by a dilution-to-extinction approach. Sterilized lake water which was obtained through an ultrafiltration system was used resembling a natural medium. Specific fragments of 16s rRNA of the isolates were amplified by universal bacterial primers (27f and 1492r, 341f and 805r.) for genotyping against a freshwater sequence database and RDP training set (Version 7). A total of 33 isolates from the two lakes were taxonomically classified and revealed the isolation of typical and abundant freshwater bacteria. Original bacterial community of Lake Ekoln was also analyzed by 16S rRNA clone library construction for diversity study. Phylogenetic trees were built through neighbor-joining method by Mega (Version 5) to reveal the evolutionary relationships among database entries, obtained isolates and clones.

Background: Due to the dynamic business environment and acceleration of technological renewal the need to pursue newest knowledge becomes crucial and more and more challenging for companies. Traditionally firms tended to keep R&D in-house but now they have to search for alternative approach to innovation, namely open innovation. Science parks are claimed to facilitate the process of inter-organizational collaboration and open innovation, in particular due to geographic proximity of on-park actors. Aim: This research is aimed to investigate the influence of geographic proximity of companies situated within a science park on collaboration and open innovation initiatives. Apart from this, other factors in a science park environment that can have an effect on open innovation are studied as well. In particular, these issues are analyzed from the perspective of on-park small and medium enterprises. Completion and results: This study revealed that geographic proximity of firms within one science park can influence open innovation to some extent. In particular, effects of certain mechanisms of geographic proximity were observed. However, all in all, geographic proximity does not have a decisive influence on inter-firm collaboration in Swedish science parks. Besides geographic proximity, other factors that may stimulate open innovation process for SMEs were analyzed.

With the increasing understaning of the need for sustainable development, many are finding that existing systems of governance are not sufficiently complex to solve the environmental crisis (see Glasbergen, 2011; Brown et al., 2009). As a result, the recent years has seen the rise of public-private participation, strengthened by the endorsement of the concept by the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 (Andonova, 2010). In Europe, the concept of collaboration between state and private sector has been further endorsed by EUCETSA and former SWENTEC. Using a literature review to establish a theoretical basis, the study then embarks on a qualitative case-study of regional environmental technology networks. This study investigates the motivations causing the companies and networks to go into partnership with one another, and whether these motivations conflict. It also aims to find the perceived benefits of cooperation and the perceived end goals. The study finds that motivations for entering into partnership often seem to be business opportunity-oriented, although elements of risk, values, legal compliance and using existing capabilities also play a large role.

Wireless communication is facing one of the fastest developments of the last years in the fields of technology and computer science in the world. There are several standards that deal with it. In this work, the IEEE standard 802.11a, which deals with wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications, is going to be discussed in detail. Taking this into consideration, PHY specifications and its environment are going to be studied. The work that the ISY department at the Institute of Technology of the Linköping University has proposed is to design a PHY layer implementation for WLANs, in a CPU, using MATLAB/Simulink and in a DSP processor, using Embedded Target for C6000 DSP and Code Composer Studio and, once implemented both, to perform and analyse the performance of the system under those implementations.

With the rapid growth of multimedia applications and the advances of wireless communication technologies, quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning for multimedia services in heterogeneous wireless networks has been an important issue and drawn much attention from both academia and industry. Due to the hostile transmission environment and limited radio resources, QoS provisioning in wireless networks is much more complex and difficult than in its wired counterpart. Moreover, due to the lack of central controller in the networks, distributed network control is required, adding complexity to QoS provisioning. In this thesis, medium access control (MAC) with QoS provisioning is investigated for both single- and multi-hop wireless networks including wireless local area networks (WLANs), wireless ad hoc networks, and wireless mesh networks. Originally designed for high-rate data traffic, a WLAN has limited capability to support delay-sensitive voice traffic, and the service for voice traffic may be impacted by data traffic load, resulting in delay violation or large delay variance. Aiming at addressing these limitations, we propose an efficient MAC scheme and a call admission control algorithm to provide guaranteed QoS for voice traffic and, at the same time, increase the voice capacity significantly compared with the current WLAN standard. In addition to supporting voice traffic, providing better services for data traffic in WLANs is another focus of our research. In the current WLANs, all the data traffic receives the same best-effort service, and it is difficult to provide further service differentiation for data traffic based on some specific requirements of customers or network service providers. In order to address this problem, we propose a novel token-based scheduling scheme, which provides great flexibility and facility to the network service provider for service class management. As a WLAN has small coverage and cannot meet the growing demand for wireless service requiring communications ``at anywhere and at anytime", a large scale multi-hop wireless network (e.g., wireless ad hoc networks and wireless mesh networks) becomes a necessity. Due to the location-dependent contentions, a number of problems (e.g., hidden/exposed terminal problem, unfairness, and priority reversal problem) appear in a multi-hop wireless environment, posing more challenges for QoS provisioning. To address these challenges, we propose a novel busy-tone based distributed MAC scheme for wireless ad hoc networks, and a collision-free MAC scheme for wireless mesh networks, respectively, taking the different network characteristics into consideration. The proposed schemes enhance the QoS provisioning capability to real-time traffic and, at the same time, significantly improve the system throughput and fairness performance for data traffic, as compared with the most popular IEEE 802.11 MAC scheme.