<p>Preface: Traditionally, assembly plant establishment in foreign countries has been a way for corporations to avoid high import duties and/or gain access to free-trade zones. With World Trade Organization (WTO) membership rising, and consequently import duties falling, the role of the assembly plant is changing. Purpose Statement: This thesis concentrates on companies that contemplate on, or have ambitions of establishing industrial assembly facilities in the country of Saudi Arabia. The main purpose is to present the disadvantages and advantages associated with assembly plant establishment, as well as to discuss and give recommendations regarding suitable assembly plant goals (long-term) in Saudi Arabia. Research Process: Background information from Scania CV AB and literary sources have provided the foundation for this research’s empirical results, which have been based on interviews, observations and articles obtained in Saudi Arabia, as well as from Scania, Arabic news sources and the Internet. Results: For corporations that can lower their overall costs in Saudi Arabia, the country offers basic assembly prerequisites. For corporations looking for long-term production, the potentiality is limited to a few major industrial areas - namely oil-, gas-, mineral-, plastics-, and chemical related industries.</p>

Bakgrund: I en värld där företagens verksamhet sprider sig i allt större utsträckning över nationella gränser, blir besluten och processerna kring internationalisering allt viktigare. Går det att fatta ett bättre beslut genom att vara rationell, och i så fall hur? Både internationalisering och rationalitet har tidigare diskuterats och det har vuxit fram flera olika skolor inom båda ämnena Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att förstå ett företags internationalisering ur ett rationalitetsperspektiv. Genomförande: Författarna har gjort en empirisk studie för att undersöka de förhållanden som kan ligga mellan internationalisering och rationalitet. Empirin är hämtad från två svenskbaserade industriföretag; BT-Industries och Scania. Resultat. Under uppsatsarbetet har en modell vuxit fram. Med hjälp av denna går det att betrakta fenomenet internationalisering ur ett rationalitetsperspektiv. Vidare framlägges de slutsatser som framkommit i analysen av de två fallföretagen.

Preface: Traditionally, assembly plant establishment in foreign countries has been a way for corporations to avoid high import duties and/or gain access to free-trade zones. With World Trade Organization (WTO) membership rising, and consequently import duties falling, the role of the assembly plant is changing. Purpose Statement: This thesis concentrates on companies that contemplate on, or have ambitions of establishing industrial assembly facilities in the country of Saudi Arabia. The main purpose is to present the disadvantages and advantages associated with assembly plant establishment, as well as to discuss and give recommendations regarding suitable assembly plant goals (long-term) in Saudi Arabia. Research Process: Background information from Scania CV AB and literary sources have provided the foundation for this research’s empirical results, which have been based on interviews, observations and articles obtained in Saudi Arabia, as well as from Scania, Arabic news sources and the Internet. Results: For corporations that can lower their overall costs in Saudi Arabia, the country offers basic assembly prerequisites. For corporations looking for long-term production, the potentiality is limited to a few major industrial areas - namely oil-, gas-, mineral-, plastics-, and chemical related industries.

The pressures of increased foreign competition can persuade a company to expand its business into international markets. In most cases, the motive is a search for improved cost efficiency or looking for the chance to expand and achieve growth. Swedish firms often develop their international operations in small steps rather than by making large foreign production investments at single points in time. Typically firms start exporting to a country via an agent, later establish a sales subsidiary, and eventually, in some cases, begin production in the host country. Such process was called Uppsala Model or Internationalisation Stage Model. The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether Uppsala Internationalisation Model apply to transition market such as Poland. The year 1989 was an important turning point in the history of the Polish economy. After a long period of isolation to the Western world, Poland opened its boarders not only for visitors and tourists, but also for foreign companies. Many of them have invested in production in Poland during the transition period. One of the Swedish investors present in Poland almost from the beginning of the transition process is Scania. Scania holds fourth position in the world in manufacturing trucks and buses, and the second place in Europe in sales of heavy trucks. Poland as a transition market attracted Scania for many different reasons such as market size, geographical location and future growth perspectives. Company's activities confirmed the assumption that Internationalisation Stage Model can be applied to transition country and can explain MNE's initial steps in the unknown environment.

Background: The concept of countries as brands has been increasingly accredited once the postmodern global world became an every day experience. A strong country brand can provide corporate brands with a unique set of values, which supports their positioning on the international market. Simultaneously, once corporate brands achieve worldwide success, they contribute actively to developing new features of the country brand. Purpose: The aim of the paper is to design a model with regard to the value- transfer from country brands to corporate brands. The model is evaluated in accordance with the relationship between Sweden and Scania, respectively Oriflame, chosen as frames of research. The researchers assess whether the process occurrence is conscious or not, be it from inside (on the corporate level) or outside (from the audiences’ perspective), as well as its consistency (the values involved in the transfer). Results: According to the research results, Scania displays a spontaneous value- transfer with Sweden the brand, whereasOriflame actively capitalises on the national set of common values. Either unconsciously present at the corporate level of Scania, or consciously exploited by Oriflame, these Swedish values repeat for both studied companies.

The globalization that has occurred during the last few years has made it more important for companies to have a well-functioning logistics system. Customers demand more options, which lead to an increased flow that creates greater demand regarding packaging and transports. Diverse logistics costs are nowadays a substantial cost for many companies. Therefore, more effort is aimed at optimizing transportation to lower these costs. The purpose of this project is to create a user-friendly calculation of logistics costs that illustrates how the costs vary, depending on how the flow is structured. This is done by examining which aspects that affect the total logistics costs and by mapping which aspects that should be included in a calculation of the logistics costs. Literature studies have been carried out parallel with empirical studies at Scania's production unit, MC, in Oskarshamn. A calculation of logistics costs is created for them with the purpose of making the materials supply system more efficient. Purchasing agreements are negotiated by Scania’s headquarters in Södertälje, whereas Scania Oskarshamn would like to evaluate the supplier suggestions from a logistics perspective. The company has declared that they are in need of a user-friendly calculation of logistics costs that can be used by many different employees. An analysis of the current situation is carried out in order to create a broad foundation of knowledge, regarding what aspects are most important to include in the calculation before creating it. The situation analysis is done through interviews and observations at the company. It shows that there are many different flows, both concerning internal material handling as well as transportation flows from suppliers to Scania Oskarshamn. As a consequence of this, a lot of effort is put into finding ways of simplifying the flows without decreasing the quality of the calculation, meaning its validity. The calculation includes five options: weight, volume, packaging, number of boxes on a EUR-pallet, and number of articles in a package. Further, it contains two different parts; one of them is a calculation of transportation costs and the other is a calculation of internal handling. The transportation calculation is founded on data from invoices, gathered and compiled during one year. The calculation of internal handling is founded on handling costs that occur depending on what packages the articles are delivered in, from the supplier. Many of the costs that occur cannot be ascribed to a certain category of packages. Therefore, the allocation of costs is done through allocation keys, according to Activity-Based Costing. The allocations of costs vary in the different areas, because it has not been possible to identify allocation keys to all of them. Finally a discussion takes place, concerning the aspects included in the current calculation against those mentioned in the literature. It is also discussed how other companies can make use of the result of this project, to create a calculation of logistics costs for their own business. / De senaste årens globalisering har lett till att det har blivit allt viktigare för företag att ha ett välskött logistiksystem för att kunna hävda sig på marknaden. Kunder kräver större valmöjligheter, vilket leder till ett ökat flöde som i sin tur ställer högre krav på emballage och transporter. Diverse logistiktjänster utgör numera en stor kostnad för företag och större fokus läggs därför på att optimera transporter för att kunna sänka dessa kostnader. Målet med detta projekt är att skapa en logistikkalkyl som enkelt illustrerar hur logistikkostnaden ändras beroende på hur logistikflödet ser ut. Detta genom att undersöka vilka faktorer som påverkar de totala logistikkostnaderna och kartlägga vilka faktorer som bör beaktas då en logistikkalkyl ska tas fram. För att nå målet har litteraturstudier gjorts parallellt med empiriska undersökningar på Scanias produktionsenhet MC i Oskarshamn. En logistikkalkyl skapas åt dem med syftet att effektivisera materialanskaffningen. Inköpsupphandlingar tas fram av Scanias huvudkontor i Södertälje varpå Scania Oskarshamn vill kunna utvärdera de leverantörsförslag som ges, ifrån ett logistikperspektiv. Företaget har uttryckt en önskan om en enkel logistikkalkyl som kan hanteras av många användare. En nulägesanalys har gjorts för att skapa en bred grund inför skapandet av kalkylen och för att få förståelse för vilka faktorer som är av störst vikt att ta med. Nulägesanalysen har tagits fram genom intervjuer och observationer på företaget. Den visar att det finns många olika flöden, både gällande intern materialhantering och gällande transportflödena från leverantörer till Scania Oskarshamn. Till följd av detta har mycket arbete lagts ner på att hitta sätt att förenkla flödena utan att göra avkall på kvaliteten i kalkylen, det vill säga dess validitet. I den kalkyl som har tagits fram görs fem val: vikt, volym, emballage, antal boxar per pallbotten och antal artiklar per emballage. Kalkylen består av två delar, dels en transportkalkyl som utgår ifrån tidigare statistik på företaget och dels en internhanteringskalkyl. Den sistnämnda grundar sig på hanteringskostnader som uppstår beroende på vilket emballage som artiklarna levereras i från leverantör. Eftersom många av de kostnader som har tagits fram inte går att härleda direkt till en kategori av emballage, har kostnadsfördelning gjorts med hjälp av fördelningsnycklar enligt ABC-kalkylering. Då det inte alltid gått att identifiera några särskiljande fördelningsnycklar har kostnadsfördelningen varierat mellan de olika huvudområdena. Avslutningsvis förs en diskussion gällande vilka aspekter som tagits med i den aktuella kalkylen gentemot vilka aspekter som nämns i litteraturen. En diskussion förs även om hur andra företag kan ta hjälp av resultatet av detta projekt då de vill skapa en logistikkalkyl i sin verksamhet.

<p>Att förstå orsaken till långsiktiga konkurrensfördelar har länge varit en intressant forskningsansats. Trots att tidigare forskning påvisat att såväl strategisk kongruens som integrerad styrning påverkar företags konkurrenskraft positivt finns det få studier som behandlar båda dessa områden tillsammans. I denna avhandling beskrivs och analyseras strategisk kongruens och integrerad styrning på Scania. Anledningen till att Scania valts som fallföretag är att det är ett framgångsrikt företag med en avancerad tillverkningsprocess. Inom dessa företag är ofta samordningen av verksamheten komplicerad, vilket innebär att högra krav ställs på såväl strategi som styrsystem.</p><p>Studien har genomförts i form av en longitudinell fallstudie och täcker studieperioden 1992 till 2006. Information har inhämtats genom intervjuer, som har genomförts med ledande befattningshavare på såväl koncernsom funktionsnivå. Vidare har internt och externt material studerats. Den teoretiska ansatsen baseras på den av Nilsson och Rapp (2005) utvecklade tentativa modellen som beskriver hur företag kan skapa strategisk kongruens och integrerad styrning på ett framgångsrikt sätt. Studiens resultat visar att den tentativa modellen var väl lämpad som analysverktyg för att ta reda på huruvida Scania har uppnått strategisk kongruens och integrerad styrning.</p><p>Scania bedriver en koncernstrategi som fokuserar på företagets kärnverksamhet - tillverkning av tunga lastbilar med hjälp av företagets modulsystem. Utifrån den väl utvecklade koncernstrategin har företaget lyckats skapa såväl en affärs- som produktionsstrategi som är anpassade till varandra samt till den omgivning som företaget är verksamt inom. Scania har dessutom genom en stark företagskultur, som karaktäriseras av att en stor del av planeringen och uppföljningen sker vid tvärfunktionella möten, lyckats skapa en integrerad styrning. Företags styrsystem hänger dessutom ihop mellan de olika organisatoriska nivåerna vilket stöder implementeringen av Scanias strategier. Företagets strategier och styrsystem har förändrats under studieperioden och anpassats till förändrade förutsättningar i omgivningen. Scania har lyckats genomföra dessa förändringar på ett sådant sätt att varken den strategiska kongruensen eller den integrerade styrningen äventyrats.</p>

This is a Masters Thesis report of a project carried out at Scania AB in Södertälje. The project concerns rationalizing Chassis calculations for use in truck Frame design. The subject for analysis is a six-wheeled articulated truck, and the load cases under study is Lateral Loading, Frame Torsion and Vertical Load on Kingpin. Making robust deformation and stress models with a calculation time sufficiently short and accuracy consistently high for efficient design work is an arduous task. This report presents several approaches to tackle this type of problem. By means of simplifying contemporary modeling approaches and methods and automating the setup process, a method that enables short calculation iterations on a chassis frame of a truck is achieved. This is done using the Catia GAS framework in conjunction with several other licences commonly used by designers.

The decision of the European Commission to block the merger between Volvo and Scania in the late 90’s became the starting point to the debate of the possible discriminating effects of the European merger regulation. Especially since the Commission a few years earlier had approved of the merger between Mercedes-Benz and Kässbohrer on the German bus market, where the conditions for competition had been similar to those at hand in the Swedish case. The issue that was and still is in focus is whether the European merger regulation is more difficult to pass for large companies situated on a smaller domestic market than is the case for their competitors of corresponding size but situated on a larger domestic market. This thesis aims at examining what the judgement of the geographical relevant market means for the application of the Merger act. This is being done from two perspectives. Firstly how the geographical criterion affects large merging companies situated on a relatively small domestic market and secondly how it affects a member state like Sweden, which is so dependent on its large companies. The purpose of this thesis also opens for a discussion of how rigid the merger control can be in an open market economy. The company perspective of the purpose is being pursued in two studies of the merger cases Volvo-Scania and Mercedes-Benz/Kässbohrer, being four national champs with differing size of domestic markets. The member state angle considers the smaller state dependence on its large companies and if that dependence itself creates a disadvantage in a merger case. The end of the purpose opens for a common discussion of the legitimacy of merger control in an open market economy. After analysing these aspects the thesis concludes that the geographical criterion makes it impossible for large companies with a relatively small domestic market to merge when a market bears the stamp of brand loyalty. Considering the small member state the conclusion is that the European merger control offers both pros and cons for consumers and that smaller states would be better off with a more producer-oriented merger law. The ending conclusion questions the Merger act as an intervening tool because of its arbitrary aspect depending on which composition the Commission has when a merger is announced.

This thesis investigates the role of organisational self-understanding in strategyprocesses. The concept of organisational self-understanding denotes members’understanding of their organisation’s identity. The study illustrates that strategyprocesses in companies are processes of self-understanding. During strategy making,strategic actors engage in the interpretation of their organisation’s identity.This self-understanding provides guidance for strategic action while it at thesame time implies understanding strategic action from the past.Organisational self-understanding is concerned with the maintenance of institutionalintegrity. In order to achieve this, those aspects of self-understandingthat have become particularly institutionalised need to develop in a continuousmanner. Previous literature on strategy and organisational identity has put toomuch emphasis on the stability/change dichotomy. The present study shows thatit is possible to maintain continuity even in times of change. Such continuity canbe established by avoiding strategic action that is perceived as disruptive withregard to self-understanding and by providing interpretations of the past thatmake developments over time appear as free from ruptures. Self-undertsandingis hence an inherently historical phenomenon.Empirically, this study is based on in-depth case studies of strategy processesin two large Swedish companies, namely the truck manufacturer Scania and thebank Handelsbanken. In each of the companies, three strategic themes in whichorganisational self-understanding has become particularly salient are studied. / <p><b>Sponsorship</b>:</p><p>Marknadstekniskt Centrum (MTC)</p>