<p>Many Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) today face problems with growth and profitability due to lack of management training within the managerial staff. This study aims to create a holistic model for how to construct a Management Training Plan for such companies and test this model on a case company.</p><p>The study found four main phases in the creation of a training plan, and thus, the model consists of four parts. The first part deals with the motivation of the trainees to go through with the training. The second part deals with deciding the content of the training plan. The third part looks at how the training plan should be designed. The fourth part looks at how to evaluate the training after it has been conducted.</p><p>The main findings are that the most interesting areas of training for the managers at Cypress Security are customer communication and financial management. The training should be a mixture between group discussions and self-study material.</p><p>We believe the results in this study should prove useful when constructing training programs for other companies since the model can be applied to almost any type of company. By providing specialized management training of this kind, SMEs reduce the need for hiring and recruiting managers with academic background and allows them to recruit from within.</p>

<p>When performing an organizational change, it is important to be aware of the culture within the company. The organization at Saab Aerosystems has a huge technical focus, which can of course be beneficial when awakening interest for a change. Another characteristic of Saab Aerosystems is that its employees are interested in being involved in change processes and have the ability to influence such changes. It is therefore important that the leader of a proposed change has a good relationship with the employees and excellent communication skills in order to both inform and listen to them. It is also important to create a commitment to change if a change project is to be successful. Within Saab Aerosystems this commitment can be created by engaging informal leaders within the project team. These employees often have a big influence on the organization as well as good knowledge of the technology and their departments’ operations. It is also important to give the organization’s members time to think through and accept a change. Without this time, resistance towards a change project can otherwise be created due to lack of understanding for the change. To create commitment to a change, the employees must also feel that they can manage the change and the situation that comes after the change. It is therefore important that the organization’s employees receive the necessary tools and education in order to give them confidence and motivation to carry out, and be a part of, the change project.</p><p>A difficult aspect during a change project can be to anchor the change within the organization. At Saab Aerosystems, changes can be anchored by involving representatives from upper management in change projects. These persons must in their turn request work that has been achieved according to the results of the change and even more importantly ensure that the change is used even upon completion of the change project. Making these demands can motivate the line managers and other employees to work according to the change and prevent reverting to old work methods and models. Finally, it is important to measure the change project progress. Examples of measure variables that can be used are business cases, questionnaires and lessons learned. These general variables ought to be complemented by specific variables for the actual change.</p>

<p>Educational institutions are becoming increasingly important for regional and national economies. Recent developments in Europe have drawn attention to the need for elite institutions. After a long domestic debate, Germany appointed three of its universities to Eliteunis in the fall of 2006. Similar discussions and initiatives have taken place in Finland and Denmark. In 2007, the Swedish university chancellor, Anders Flodström, initiated a public debate about improving the Swedish system of higher education by concentrating it to fewer institutions of higher quality. As a contribution to these discussions, it is of general interest to understand why and how educational institutions become successful. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate what strategy and external factors that has made one particular institution – Massachusetts Institute of Technology – successful. The findings of the study show that MIT’s success depends on the possession of several important strategic resources: faculty and student quality, endowment, reputation and campus location. Thanks to these resources, in combination with some external factors, primarily the influx of large amounts of federal research funding and the (entrepreneurial) success of MIT alumni, the Institute has been able to attract: federal and private research funding, donations and more high quality faculty and students. Faculty are motivated to excel through a well-devised promotion and incentive system. There is a strong virtuous cycle dynamic between the resources. For example, an institution with strong reputation will attract good students and faculty. This will lead to increasing faculty and student quality which will improve the reputation further. To enter the virtuous cycle, significant financial resources are required. MIT, received much of these resources through the immense research efforts that were funded by the U.S. government during World War II, the Space Race and the Cold War. This enabled MIT to attract excellent faculty and build its reputation.</p>

<p>To be able to compete on the market environmental Management System has become an important part of operations work. However, many companies still haven’t implemented an environmental management systems due to lack of time and the high costs. One of the companies with this problem is Falu Bildemontering. Their goal is to accredited according to the ISO 14 001 certificate. One step on the way is to get the SBR license, Sveriges Bildemonterings Riksförbunds license.</p><p>The purpose of this report is to create a method for the creation of an integrated system that regards an organisations processes and environmental work. By doing this the enviromental work can be implemented in the every day work.</p><p>The report and the study is created through a study of relevant literature from which a model has been created. The model has then been tested and evaluated at Falu Bildemontering.</p><p>The first activity that is conducted in the work towards an integrated system is to map the organisations processes. A flow chart is created to get an overview. The second step is to analyze the different processes with the goal to upgrade them. This is performed by process development and with a stepwise model created by Aronsson. To be able to integrate the system in the every day work a comparison between the different management systems is done. The most efficient way to perform this is to have a living document where the newly developed processes are written down.</p><p>The final goal with an integrated system is to create a simple, efficient and enviromental adapted process where the organistaions sections are being brought together. The result can yield bigger profits and decreasing costs.</p>

<p>The overall purpose of this paper is to investigate the implementation of Continuous Improvement (CI) in companies from Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Australia and United Kingdom.This paper used the 2nd international CI survey to analyze CI behavior. The analysis was made by comparing the tools in clusters defined by different CI abilities.The major finding is that different CI tool usage depends on the different CI ability</p>

<p>This thesis examines innovation and design processes in small established companies. There is a great interest in this area yet paradoxically the area is under-researched, since most innovation research is done on large companies. The research questions are: How do small established companies carry out their innovation and design processes? and How does the context and novelty of the process and product affect the same processes?</p><p>The thesis is built on three research papers that used the research method of multiple case studies of different small established companies. The innovation and design processes found were highly context dependent and were facilitated by committed resources, a creative climate, vision, low family involvement, delegated power and authority, and linkages to external actors such as customers and users. Both experimental cyclical and linear structured design processes were found. The choice of structure is explained by the relative product and process novelty experienced by those developing the product innovation. Linear design processes worked within a low relative novelty situation and cyclical design processes worked no matter the relative novelty. The innovation and design processes found were informal, with a low usage of formal systematic design methods, except in the case of design processes for software. The use of formal systematic methods in small companies seems not always to be efficient, because many of the problems the methods are designed to solve are not present. Customers and users were found to play a large and important role in the innovation and design processes found and gave continuous feedback during the design processes. Innovation processes were found to be intertwined, yielding synergy effects, but it was common that resources were taken from the innovation processes for acute problems that threatened the cash flow. In sum, small established companies have the natural prerequisites to take advantage of lead-user inventions and cyclical design processes. Scarce resources were found to be the main factor hindering innovation, but the examined companies practiced several approaches to increase their resources or use existing scarce resources more efficiently in their innovation and design processes. Examples of these approaches include adopting lead-user inventions and reducing formality in the innovation and design processes.</p>

<p>Att införa lean principer inom sjukvården är ett relativt nytt område. Landstinget i Gävleborg och Gävle sjukhus är intresserade av att korta ner sina vårdköer med hjälp av logistiska metoder och lean production principer. Detta på grund av att vårdköerna på bland annat urologmottagningen på Gävle sjukhus bara växer. Lean production är ett koncept som ursprungligen härstammar från bilindustrin i Japan och innebär att man strävar efter att göra mer med mindre. På svenska kan lean production översättas till resurssnål produktion och arbetet med lean innefattar principer som kunden i fokus, teamarbete och ständiga förbättringar.</p><p>Syftet med examensarbetet är att ta fram en arbetsmodell för införande av lean principer inom sjukvården, då vårdköerna idag är långa och någon form av förändring är nödvändig. Arbetsmodellen innehåller sex olika nivåer, kartläggning, analys, framtagning av förbättringsförslag, avstämning, genomförande och uppföljning. De fyra första stegen kommer att presenteras i arbetet medans de två sista stegen ligger utanför arbetets ramar.</p><p>Genom att använda logistiska metoder och lean principer i kartläggningar och analyser av mottagningens processer har en del problemområden upptäckts. Problemen har sedan analyserats och förbättringsförslag till de olika områdena har utarbetats. Förbättringsförslagen som har utarbetats med hjälp av logistiska metoder och lean production principer bör kunna medverka till en minskning av urologmottagningens vårdköer.</p> / <p>Introducing lean production principles in health care is a relatively new area. The county council in Gävleborg and Gävle hospital are interested in shortening their health queues with help from logistics methods and lean production principles. This is among others because of growing health queues at the urologist reception in Gävle hospital. Lean production is a concept arising from the Japanese car industry, meaning a quest to do more with less. In Swedish lean production can be translated to resource- economic production and the work with lean production includes principles like customer focus, teamwork and continuous improvement.</p><p>The purpose with this thesis is to compile a working model which can be used when implementing lean principles in health care. This is because the health queues to the reception today are long and some kind of transform is necessary. The working model consists of six different levels, mapping, analyze, developing improvement suggestions, balancing, implementation and follow up. The first four steps in the working model will be introduced in this thesis, although the last two steps are outside the limits of this thesis.</p><p>By using logistics methods and lean principles in mapping and analysis of the receptions processes some problem areas have been discovered. The discovered problems have been analyzed and improvement suggestions to the different problem areas have then been elaborated. The improvement suggestions which have been elaborated with help from logistics methods and lean production principles can contribute to a decrease of the urologist receptions health queues.</p>

<p>It is important that organizations today focus on continuous improvements in order to face the growing competition in the world. A company needs a corporate culture that supports and encourages the employees to be creative and innovative in their work. This is necessary for the company if they are striving towards continuous learning and development within their organization.</p><p>The main purpose of this paper is to investigate how the culture differences between Sweden and China affect Sandvik AB. We will also study how the company manages continuous improvements and what consequences culture differences have on their work.</p><p>Our paper is a single case study at Sandvik AB in Sweden and China. We have visited Sandvik in Sandviken to conduct a series of interviews with employees of different position within the company and with dissimilar work tasks. We have chosen this procedure to get different angles from the respondents and to acquire depth in our research. After the company visit in Sandviken we had appointments with personal at Sandvik in Beijing, Langfang and Shanghai. These employees also had different position and work tasks within the company.</p><p>After finished study, we can make the conclusion that there exist several culture differences between Sweden and China. Most of these differences can be connected to the national culture. Sandvik where founded in Sweden and therefore they have a Swedish corporate culture. Today the company is a multinational corporation that operates business at the Chinese market and thereby in the Chinese national culture. Because of this situation, we think that it is important that Sandvik finds a balance between the corporate and national culture.</p><p>Today, a new China is emerging. The country has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, this having and will continue to have consequences on Sandvik AB: s organization. In China 20 million students are graduated from the university today and this result in harder competition on the labour market. When more people getting an education, particularly in China, price on knowledge will decrease. The consequence of this will be that the demand of creativity and innovative thinking is rising, especially in Sweden where the labour cost is significantly higher.</p>

<p>The globalization has converted the world into a small global village; a village in which there is an ever high stream of contentions and competitions between organizations. In this scenario the most effective and beneficial maneuver for any organization is to create innovative ways in conducting business. This thesis deals with the role of leadership in the phenomena of organizational change and innovation. The leader as a person in charge or as a change agent can manage an organization or the process of organizational change more effectively and successfully if h/she is capable and competent. Rapid technological advancements, high expectations of customers, and ever changing market situations have compelled organizations to incessantly reassess and reevaluate how they work and to understand, adopt and implement changes in their business model in response of changing trends. Organizational change is a demand of the day, and needed for organizations to survive. Organizations now a days, well understand the importance of the matter, and are serious to prepare themselves not only the current, but also for the future trends to get the level of sustainable success, but Along with all of its implications and importance the process of organizational change is also a very complex and challenging.  Research shows that 70 percent of organizational changes fail to get their goals. As leadership has a central role in evolution and cultivating an organization, the process of organizational change demands a very effective and highly competent leadership that is well capable to perceive the most desirable shape of an organization and address the issue of organizational change in most appropriate way. The analysis of literature reviewed and the results of real life cases of organizations which are studied for this thesis shows, that a leadership with the competencies of “Vision” and “Innovative Approach” along with other characteristics can prove more effective to conclude the complex phenomena of organizational change with success. Further the successful organizational change can leads to innovation for organization, which is the key of long term success and sustainability. This thesis as a result proposed a model which is derived from the leadership competencies, organizational change, and sustainable success and innovation literature. This model expresses relationship between successful organizational change and leadership on the basis of h/her characteristics, which are ‘Vision” and “Innovative Approach”. With the help of proposed model this relationship can be viewed graphically.</p>

<p>The Transport division is responsible for the internal transports on Sandvik Material</p><p>Technology AB. At the moment there is no clear picture of how the straddle carriers are</p><p>moving at the division Primary Products and if it is working in a satisfying way. It is</p><p>important to see the whole picture of the transportation flow so improvements can be made.</p><p>The purpose of this essay is to survey and analyse the truck flow in a Lean Production</p><p>perspective. The essay is delimited to only include straddle carriers transportation ways in the</p><p>Primary Products division. To survey the truck flow we have used a method called Walkthrough.</p><p>This means that we have walked thorough the whole production flow and</p><p>interviewed some of the employed on the way to get the necessary information. We have also</p><p>made an extensive literature study to gather all the necessary theories that is relevant for this</p><p>essay.</p><p>Since 2003 Sandvik Material Technology is running a project called “ledtidsprojektet”, the</p><p>purpose of this project is to create a more efficient production. This project is based on the</p><p>Japanese philosophy Lean Production but is audited to be suitable to Sandviks organisation.</p><p>Today most of the producing divisions within SMT are working according to</p><p>”ledtidsprogrammet”, unfortunately it is not introduced on the Transport division yet.</p><p>The result we got by studying the use of the straddle carriers showed that 40 % where with</p><p>cargo, 35 % without and 25 % where remaining times were breaks are included. The basis of</p><p>the study is from a GPS-transmitter which is placed on one of the straddle carrier. We have</p><p>also made our own study where we followed on the straddle carrier and measured the time for</p><p>the different activities. To get a more statistical secured investigation it is necessary to make a</p><p>more extensive study, when these study where made during a limited time.</p><p>On the basis of the truck flows survey some suggestions for improvements have been</p><p>identified. It has showed that today’s key measurements have to be overlooked to give a fair</p><p>picture of the situation. They also have to improve the way they are planning the transports.</p><p>This can be made by better communication with the producing divisions.</p><p>For the straddle carriers to be more Lean first the producing divisions have to work according</p><p>to the Lean philosophy. It is up to them to try to reduce the stock level and get a more evenly</p><p>production.</p>