Inköpsmätning av indirekt material och tjänster - en flerfallsstudie

Syfte: Syftet med detta examensarbete är att undersöka hur mogna företagets inköpsavdelningar är och om mognadsgrad har något samband mellan hur de arbetar och mäter sin inköpsfunktion, samt att undersöka hur stora företag jobbar med indirekt inköp idag. Problembeskrivning: De olika frågorna som studien önskar besvara kan sammanfattas enligt följande: * Var befinner sig företagens mognadsgrad enligt van Weeles utvecklingsmodell? * Hur arbetar företagen med indirekt inköp? * Hur jobbar företagen med mätning av indirekt inköp? * Finns det något samband mellan mognadsgrad och användandet av nyckeltal för indirekt inköp? * Andra erfarenheter för indirekt inköp? Metod: För att kunna ge svar på forskningsfrågorna har metoden flerfallsstudie använts. Studier har gjorts på sju företag: Boliden, Duni, IKEA, Lantmännen, NCC, Säkerhetföretaget och Trelleborg. Datainsamlingen har varit kvalitativ genom intervjuer. Dessa intervjuer gjorde grunden för de empiriska beskrivningarna i studien. Varje fall analyserades först utefter den teoretiska referensramen och sedan gjordes en korsanalys för att jämföra likheter och skillnader mellan fallen. Teoretisk referensram: Den teoretiska referensramen är uppdelad i tre olika delar, där den första bygger på van Weeles utvecklingsmodell (2010, s. 68-69). Denna anger förhållandet mellan hur stora besparingar som företagen kan göra beroende på hur mogna deras inköpsavdelning är och innehåller sex olika mognadsnivåer. Den andra delen är uppbyggd kring studien om olika externa strategier vid indirekt köp av Cox et al. (2005, s. 43). Denna behandlar allt från att inte ha någon strageti alls till att gå samman med andra företag och bilda inköpskonsortium eller outsourca delar av verksamheten. Den tredje delen bygger på van Weeles fyra olika områden av inköpsmätning (2010, s. 307). Den första handlar om pris- och kostnadsreduktion och kostnadsundvikande. Det andra området är produkt- och kvalitetsmätning, vilka underområden är just produkt och kvalité. Det tredje området är logistikrelaterade mätningar och är indelad i intern och extern. Det sista området är organisatoriska och är indelade i intern efterlevnad och inköpsavdelningens kvalité. Slutsats: Alla fallen hamnar på nivå tre eller högre enligt utvecklingsmodellens sex steg. Detta innebär att deras inköpsavdelningar helt eller delvis är integrerade inom företaget. Det innebär också att inköpsfunktionen har fokus från högsta ledningsnivå i företaget. Inköpsfunktionens struktur är ofta en hybrid som är centralt styrd. För fallet som finns på det femte och näst högsta steget, finns även extern integration där synergieffekter nås tillsammans med leverantörerna. Författarna tror att våra urvalskriterier är en stor anledning till detta resultat, då valda fall är stora och har väl etablerade inköpsavdelningar. Kort- och långsiktiga leverantörsrelationer är de dominerande strategierna bland fallen i vår studie. Vilken som används för de olika leverantörerna beror på vilken produkt det är. Det är stor skillnad bland fallen gällande vilken prioritet indirekt inköp får och vilken andel av den totala spenden som det står för. Andelen är i denna studie mellan fem och fyrtio procent. Flera av fallen använder sig av interna och externa inköpskonsortium, men inget fall hade outsourcat någon indirekt inköpsverksamhet till ett tredjepartsföretag. Fallens vanligaste mätetal för indirekt material och tjänster är besparingar, farmförallt genom att jämföra dagens priser mot de historiska. Flera av fallen mäter dessutom besparingar mot marknadspriserna. Inom besparingar finns det ett tydligt samband mellan mognadsgrad och hur fallen mäter, där de mogna mäter priser mot de historiska och marknadspriserna. Eftersom många av företagen har problem med contract compliance, är detta ett viktigt mätetal för flertalet av fallen. Samtliga företagen i studien mäter sina leverantörer på olika typer av hållbarhet, arbetsmiljö och social ansvar. Två av de sju fallen mäter bara totalt inköp och har inga explicita mätetal för indirekta tjänster och material. Tiden fallen har mätt varierar från ett par till tio år, men inget samband mellan detta och deras mognadsgrad kunde indentifieras i denna studie. Svårigheter med mätning för indirekt inköp är att ta fram mätetal som ger ett bidrag till verksamheten och som reflekterar det man vill mäta på ett bra och korrekt sätt. Många utav fallen önskar att mäta TCO, men de menar att det är ett teoretiskt begrepp som är mycket svårt att realisera i praktiken.Purpose: The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine how companies work with performance measurements for purchasing of indirect materials and services and its relation to purchasing maturity. Problem formulation: These are the five research questions for this study: * How developed are the companies purchasing departments? * How are the companies working with indirect purchasing? * What performance measurements are the companies using for indirect purchasing? * Is there any links between the maturity of the purchasing department and how the companies work with performance measurements? * Are there other important experiences in indirect purchasing? Methodology: A multiple case study has been used to address the research questions. Seven case studies have been conducted (Säkerhetsföretaget, Boliden, Duni, IKEA, Lantmännen, NCC and Trelleborg) where data has been collected through qualitative interviews. Each case study was first analyzed individually along the theoretical framework, bore a cross-analysis was performed to compare similarities and differences between the cases. Frame och reference: The frame of reference consists of three different parts. Van Weele's six-stop development model (2010, s. 68-69) is the platform to discuss level of maturity of the purchasing department. The second part is based om Cox et al. (2005, s. 43) who present strategies for purchasing indirect material and services. These strategies go from having no strategy at all, to having a purchasing consortium or outsourcing parts of the purchasing department. The third part explains four different areas within purchasing measurement by van Weele (2010, s. 307). The first area concerns price and cost, with subareas as cost reduction and cost avoidance. The second area concerns product and quality measurement while the third area relates to logistics. the last area concerns organizational issues with subareas of intern compliance and quality of the purchasing department. All cases were positioned within level two or higher, according to the six-step development model. This means that the cases purchasing departments are at least partly integrated with the other businesses. Further the purchasing department has attention even from the top management. The organizational structure of the purchasing department is often centre-lec. One of the cases is positioned in the fifth level, implying external integration where synergies are reached together with the suppliers. This result might be dependent on our case selection criteria focusing on big companies with well established purchasing departments. Conclusion: The most common strategies in our case study is a mix of short and long contracts. Which of these strategies that is used, depends on the product. When it comes to how prioritized the purchase of indirect material and services are, the differences between the cases regarding their ratio of indirect spend and total spend (between five and forty percent). Many of the cases uses purchasing consortium, both internally and externally, but none of them had outsources any part of their business. The most commonly used part is savings, especially the metric where the current prices are compared to the historical prices. Many of the cases also measure savings compared to market prices. The study observes a relationship between the maturity of the cases and what purchasing performance measurement they are using. Many of the cases have problems with contract compliance, and hence this has become an important metric for them. All cases are measuring their suppliers on different types of sustainability, work environment and social responsibility. However, two of the seven cases do only measure the total level of purchasing, and do not have any specific metrics for their indirect material and services. The cases have been measuring purchasing between two to ten years, but we did not find any relation between the time that they have measured and their maturity level. The biggest difficult with measuring observed, was to come up with metrics that gives good input to, and reflects the issues, in a good way. Many of the cases wanted to measure TCO, but they had problems to concretize this theoretical metric

Person-centred care and the work-related health and job satisfaction of health and social care professionals:protocol for a prospective longitudinal cohort study combined with qualitative studies (the PCC@Work project)

BackgroundThe interplay of ethical stress, heavy workloads, and job dissatisfaction poses challenges to both the recruitment and retention of health and social care professionals. Person-centred care, rooted in ethical principles, involves collaborative care, and is expected to improve care and job satisfaction. However, prior research on the impact of person-centred care practices on professionals’ work-related health and job satisfaction has yielded mixed results, and most studies emanate from residential care. Understanding how person-centred care practices influence health and social care professionals across different care settings thus requires further exploration through rigorous methodology. The overall aim of PCC@Work is to follow, describe, assess, and explore the impact of person-centred care practices in hospital wards, primary care centres and municipal care on health and social care professionals’ work-related health and job satisfaction.MethodsPCC@Work is designed as a prospective, longitudinal cohort study combined with qualitative studies. A web-based questionnaire will be distributed on five occasions within two years to health and social care professionals in the three care settings. In addition, focus groups and interviews will be conducted with a selection of health and social care professionals to explore their experiences of work-related health and job satisfaction in relation to person-centred practices.DiscussionPCC@Work will highlight some of the knowledge gaps on the impact of person-centred care practices regarding work-related health and job satisfaction of health and social care professionals. The uniqueness of the project lies in the multi-method design, combining a prospective longitudinal cohort study with qualitative studies, and the involvement of various professions and settings. This means we will be able to provide a comprehensive and representative understanding of person-centred care practices as a critical component for effective change in the working conditions of health and social care

Person-centred care and the work-related health and job satisfaction of health and social care professionals:protocol for a prospective longitudinal cohort study combined with qualitative studies (the PCC@Work project)

BackgroundThe interplay of ethical stress, heavy workloads, and job dissatisfaction poses challenges to both the recruitment and retention of health and social care professionals. Person-centred care, rooted in ethical principles, involves collaborative care, and is expected to improve care and job satisfaction. However, prior research on the impact of person-centred care practices on professionals’ work-related health and job satisfaction has yielded mixed results, and most studies emanate from residential care. Understanding how person-centred care practices influence health and social care professionals across different care settings thus requires further exploration through rigorous methodology. The overall aim of PCC@Work is to follow, describe, assess, and explore the impact of person-centred care practices in hospital wards, primary care centres and municipal care on health and social care professionals’ work-related health and job satisfaction.MethodsPCC@Work is designed as a prospective, longitudinal cohort study combined with qualitative studies. A web-based questionnaire will be distributed on five occasions within two years to health and social care professionals in the three care settings. In addition, focus groups and interviews will be conducted with a selection of health and social care professionals to explore their experiences of work-related health and job satisfaction in relation to person-centred practices.DiscussionPCC@Work will highlight some of the knowledge gaps on the impact of person-centred care practices regarding work-related health and job satisfaction of health and social care professionals. The uniqueness of the project lies in the multi-method design, combining a prospective longitudinal cohort study with qualitative studies, and the involvement of various professions and settings. This means we will be able to provide a comprehensive and representative understanding of person-centred care practices as a critical component for effective change in the working conditions of health and social care

A multimodal brain imaging dataset on sleep deprivation in young and old humans

The Stockholm Sleepy Brain Study I is a functional brain imaging study of 48 younger (20-30 years) and 36 older (65-75 years) healthy participants, with magnetic resonance imaging after normal sleep and partial sleep deprivation in a crossover design. We performed experiments investigating emotional mimicry, empathy for pain, and cognitive reappraisal, as well as resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We also acquired T1- and T2-weighted structural images and diffusion tensor images (DTI). On the night before imaging, participants were monitored with ambulatory polysomnography and were instructed to sleep either as usual or only three hours. Participants came to the scanner the following evening. Besides MRI scanning, participants underwent behavioral tests and contributed blood samples, which have been stored in a biobank and used for DNA analyses. Participants also completed a variety of self-report measures. The resulting multimodal dataset may be useful for hypothesis generation or independent validation of effects of sleep deprivation and aging, as well as investigation of cross-sectional associations between the different outcomesNoneManuscrip

Identifiering av designprinciper för migrering av spel till iPhone

Syftet med denna uppsats var att identifiera designprinciper vid migrering av stationära spel till Apples iPhone. Litteraturstudier, heuristisk utvärdering, enkätundersökning och djupintervjuer användes som metoder. Resultaten visade på att framför allt inmatningsmetoder, brist på feedback och skärmstorlek är problemområden i migrerade spel. Slutsatser inkluderar att spel aldrig bör migreras exakt som de stationära versionerna, nya inmatningsmetoder hos mobiltelefoner bör utnyttjas bättre och det bör övervägas om vissa spel överhuvudtaget bör migreras beroende på genre.The purpose of this thesis was to identify design principles for use at migrations of stationary games to Apple’s iPhone. Literature studies, heuristic evaluation, survey and in-depth interviews were used as methods. The results showed that especially input methods, lack of feedback and screen size are problematic ares in migrated games. Conclusions include that games should never be migrated exactly like the stationary versions, new input methods in mobile phones should be utilized in a better way and it should be considered if some games are suitable to be migrated at all depending on genre

Highly linear gallium nitride MMIC LNAs

In this paper, two Low Noise Amplifiers designed in Gallium Nitride HEMT MMIC technology are presented. The focus of the designs is to achieve good linearity at low power consumption and acceptable noise figure. The first design achieves an OIP3/PDC of 12 using traditional LNA design techniques. In a second design, the OIP3 is improved by 2 dB, raising OIP3/PDC to 19, among the highest figures reported for GaN LNAs. This is achieved by using both inductive source feedback and drain-gate RC feedback

Omvänt Förvärv, ett fenomen på First North : en studie i skillnader mellan bolags sätt att ta sig till Nasdaqs tillväxtmarknad

New companies go public through Nasdaqs growth market First North constantly. The reasons for going public are many, and the interest at the moment is big. There are different ways to go public, the most common being the traditional IPO. This study is about the companies that have been listed on Nasdaq First North between 2008 and 2013 through traditional IPO, or by RTO (reverse takeover). The differences between these two ways of going public are that the IPOs are reviewed more thoroughly by Nasdaq and the market. This makes the study interesting, as the RTOs go public in a faster way, and avoid the review from outside parties largely. In this study you will see whether there is a difference in investing in either group of companies, from a shareholders point of view. In the study, we establish that there is no difference in the performance between the two groups of companies. However, we do see clear differenes between the companies development, not from a share perspective, but in other interesting perspectives such as takeovers, listing changes, bankruptcy, and delistings.På Nasdaqs tillväxtmarknad First North sker ständigt nya introduktioner av företag. Anledningarna till börsnoteringarna är många, och intresset är i skrivande stund stort för att introduceras på börsen. Det finns olika sätt att introduceras på börsen, där det vanligast förkommande är genom en så kallad IPO-process. Denna studie utgår från bolag som har börsnoterats på Nasdaq First North under tidsperioden 2008-2013 genom IPO och RTO (omvända förvärv). Skillnaderna mellan dessa introduktioner är att IPO-bolagen granskas i högre grad av Nasdaqoch marknaden i övrigt inför introduktionen. Detta gör det intressant då RTO-bolagen kommer snabbare in på börsen och undviker granskningen från utomstående parter till stordel. I studien får du ur ett aktieägarperspektiv svar på om det är värt att investera i större utsträckning i någon av kategorierna, samt aktiernas utveckling i relation till deras branschindex på Nasdaq First North. I studien konstaterar vi att RTO-bolagen inte presterar sämre än IPO-bolagen om man ser till branschindex. Vi ser dock genomgående att det är tydliga skillnader vad gäller företagens utveckling, men inte ur ett aktiekursperspektiv utan snarare till andra intressanta aspekter såsom uppköp, listbyten, konkurser samt avnoteringar

De internationella musikbolagens redovisning av immateriella tillgångar : Vad kan de svenska bolagen tillämpa i jakten på rättvisande bild?

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe and explain the international music company reports of its intangible assets to examine whether similar methods can be applied to the Swedish market. Method: The study was based on a qualitative and abductive research approach. Collected data is mainly from secondary sources in the form of auditor approved consolidated financial statements. Conclusion: The Swedish music companies activate their intangible assets only partially or not at all, despite the fact that assets in the form of music catalogs, rights, contracts and advances are those that generate revenue for the companies. The study has resulted in a description of how the companies are doing on an international level with the IASB and FASB's regulation. With this report, we have found flaws in the way the Swedish companies prepare their accounts according to the current regulations. In the analysis, these shortcomings are highlighted and to what extent these international standards can be applied in the Swedish companies to take a step towards a more accurate picture and a harmonized and comparable accounting.Syfte: Syftet med studien är att beskriva och förklara hur internationella musikbolag redovisar sina immateriella tillgångar för att på så sätt kunna undersöka huruvida liknande metoder kan tillämpas på den svenska marknaden. Metod: Studien har utgått från en kvalitativ forskningsstrategi med en abduktiv ansats. Insamlad data kommer främst från sekundärkällor i form av tillstrykta koncernredovisningar. Slutsats: De svenska musikbolagen aktiverar sina immateriella tillgångar delvis eller inte alls, trots att dessa tillgångar i form av musikkataloger, rättigheter, kontrakt och förskott är de som genererar intäkter hos företagen. Studien har resulterat i en beskrivning av hur bolagen gör på internationell nivå enligt IASB och FASB’s regelverk. I och med denna redogörelse har vi funnit brister i sättet de svenska bolagen upprättar sin redovisning enligt årsredovisingslagen. I analysen påtalas dessa brister och i vilken mån dessa internationella standarder kan tillämpas hos de svenska bolagen för att på så sätt ta steget mot en mer rättvisande bild samt en harmoniserad och jämförbar redovisning.

Noise temperature of an electronic tuner for noise parameter measurement systems

In this paper, the noise temperature of an electronic tuner is determined and its significance for the suitability of such tuners in noise parameter measurement systems discussed. The noise temperature of the tuner was found to be higher than the ambient room temperature in the laboratory and vary significantly between tuner states. For impedance states with small input reflections coefficients, the excess noise temperature is around 25 K. For some of the states with higher reflection coefficients, this figure increases, reaching around 45 K at |Γ| = 0.75. Unless accounted for, this leads to errors in noise parameter extraction when using an electronic tuner in noise parameter measurements

Design and characterization of a highly linear 3 GHz GaN HEMT amplifier

In this paper a highly linear amplifier using an in-house gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology is presented. A 3 dB bandwidth of 2.7-3.6 GHz with a maximum gain of 18 dB was measured. The output third-order intercept point (OIP3) was measured to 39 dBm with a maximum power consumption of 2.1 W. With a reduction of power consumption to 1 W the noise figure was improved by 0.6 dB while the OIP3 was degraded 3 dB