Leveransservice från sågverk till bygghandel

Sågverksindustrin är en produktionsorienterad industri där lönsamhet och konkurrenskraft traditionellt sett har skapats genom stordriftsfördelar. Att erbjuda en hög service vid försäljning och leverans av produkterna är ett sätt att skapa ökat kundvärde och därmed ökad konkurrenskraft för sågverk. Leveransservice är ett begrepp inom logistik som handlar om den kundservice som behandlar order- och leveransprocesser. Att erbjuda hög leveransservice skapar ökat kundvärde, men medför också höga kostnader. Det är därför viktigt att känna till kundernas önskemål och förväntningar på leveransservice för att kunna avgöra hur hög leveransservice som bör erbjudas. Servicekvalitet handlar om skillnaden mellan kundens förväntningar och kundens upplevelse av erbjuden service. Hög leveransservicekvalitet handlar om att erbjuda kunderna en leveransservice som motsvarar, eller överträffar kundernas förväntningar. Genom en kvalitativ fallstudie där intervjuer genomförts med respondenter från Karbenning sågverk och respondenter från bygghandeln som tar emot leveranser från Karbenning sågverk är syftet med denna studie att definiera och utvärdera leveransservice från sågverk till bygghandel. Studien visar att respondenterna från sågverket och respondenterna från bygghandeln har liknande syn kring vad som är viktigt för leveransservice från sågverk till bygghandeln. Leveranstid, leveransprecision, leveranssäkerhet, lagerservicenivå och information har identifierats som viktiga leveransserviceelement i denna studie. Genom att fokusera på ett fåtal produkter med hög omsättning, jobba med intern kommunikation, tydliga leveransrutiner och hålla tät kontakt med kunder strävar Karbenning sågverk efter att erbjuda bygghandeln hög leveransservicekvalitet. Studien visar att kvaliteten på leveransservice från Karbenning sågverk till bygghandeln är hög och att sågverket generellt sett erbjuder högre leveransservice än konkurrenter. Endast ett fåtal förbättringsområden för att erbjuda högre leveransservicekvalitet har identifierats i denna studie, dessa är kopplade till lagerservicenivå och information kring order och leveranser.The sawmill industry is a production oriented industry where profitability and competitiveness have traditionally been created through economies of scale. Offering a high level of service at the sale and delivery processes can increase customer value and thereby increase competitiveness for sawmills. Delivery service has a logistic component dealing with the customer service regarding order- and delivery processes. Offering high delivery service creates increased customer value, but also entails high costs. Therefore, it is important to know the customers´ expectations of delivery service in order to be able to determine which level of delivery service to offer. Service quality is defined as the difference between customer expectations and customer´s perceived experience of the service offered. High delivery service quality means offering customers a delivery service that corresponds to, or exceeds customer expectations. The aim of this study is to define and evaluate delivery service from sawmill to retailer. A case study was conducted. Based on interviews with respondents from Karbenning sawmill and respondents from retailers receiving deliveries from Karbenning sawmill this study identify delivery time, delivery precision, delivery reliability, inventory service level and information as important delivery service elements. The study shows that the delivery service quality from Karbenning sawmill to retailers is high and that the sawmill offers higher delivery service than competitors. Only a few areas of improvement to offer higher delivery service quality have been identified in this study, these are linked to the inventory service level and to information about orders and deliveries

Forest policy communication - from Swedish Forest Agency to non-industrial private forest owners

Skogen har många olika nyttigheter och åsikterna om hur skogen ska brukas är många, detta gör skogen till en politisk fråga. Skogsstyrelsen är den myn-dighet som ansvarar för att skogspolitiken efterlevs och skogsvårdslagen re-glerar hur Sveriges skogar ska skötas. Eftersom skogsvårdslagen är en mini-milag och hälften av all skog ägs av privata skogsägare, är Skogsstyrelsens kommunikation av skogspolitiken till de privata skogsägarna viktig för att uppnå de skogspolitiska målen. Genom att göra en innehållsanalys av tid-ningen Skogseko, som är en stor kommunikationskanal för Skogsstyrelsen, analyseras centrala begrepp kopplade till de två skogspolitiska målen, pro-duktion och miljö. För att avgöra om Skogsstyrelsens kommunikation är an-passad till skogsägaren, görs även en litteraturstudie på de enskilda privata skogsägarnas kunskap om skogsbruk. Resultatet från innehållsanalysen vi-sar att skogsstyrelsen kommunicerar båda målen och att en del av begreppen beskrivs i tidningen. Resultatet från litteraturstudien indikerar att privata en-skilda skogsägare har mindre kunskap om begrepp kopplade till miljömålet än produktionsmålet. Med stöd av teorier från kommunikationsvetenskapen diskuteras om Skogsstyrelsens kommunikation är anpassad till de enskilda privata skogsägarna.The forest has many different utilities and the views about how forest will be managed are many, this makes forestry a political issue. The Swedish Forest Agency is the authority responsible for forestry policy and the For-estry Act regulates how the Swedish forests are managed. Because the For-estry Act is a framework and half of all forest are owned by non-industrial private forest owners, the communication of forest policy to non-industrial private forest owners is important to achieve the goals of forest policy. By doing a content analysis of the newspaper Skogseko, which is a major com-munication channel for the Swedish Forest Agency, key concepts related to the two forest policy goals, production and environment were analyzed. To determine if the Swedish Forest Agency communication is adapted to the non-industrial private forest owner’s knowledge about forestry, a literature study within this subject were done. The results of content analysis show that the Swedish Forest Agency communicates both cases and some of the key concepts are described in the paper. The results of the literature study indicate that non-industrial private forest owners have less knowledge of concepts related to the environmental goal than the production goal. With the support of theories of communication sciences, it is discussed if the communication from Swedish Forest Agency is adapted to the non-indus-trial private forest owners

Towards a Holistic Controller: Reinforcement Learning for Data Center Control

The increased use of cloud and other large scale datacenter IT services and the associated power usage has put the spotlight on more energy-efficient datacenter management. In this paper, a simple model was developed to represent the heat rejection system and energy usage in a small DC setup. The model was then controlled by a reinforcement learning agent that handles both the load balancing of the IT workload, as well as cooling system setpoints.The main contribution is the holistic approach to datacenter control where both facility metrics, IT hardware metric and cloud service logs are used as inputs. The application of reinforcement learning in the proposed holistic setup is feasible and achieves results that outperform standard algorithms. The paper presents both the simplified DC model and the reinforcement learning agent in detail and discusses how this work can be extended towards a richer datacenter model

Dissemination of Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria into the Arctic

We show that Escherichia coli isolates originating from Arctic birds carry antimicrobial drug resistance determinants. This finding implies that dissemination of drug-resistant bacteria is worldwide. Resistance genes can be found even in a region where no selection pressure for resistance development exists

The Notch and TGF-β Signaling Pathways Contribute to the Aggressiveness of Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

Despite recent progress, therapy for metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (CCRCC) is still inadequate. Dysregulated Notch signaling in CCRCC contributes to tumor growth, but the full spectrum of downstream processes regulated by Notch in this tumor form is unknown

Allergy-related diseases in childhood and risk for abdominal pain-related functional gastrointestinal disorders at 16 years—a birth cohort study

Background Studies on allergy-related diseases in relation to abdominal pain-related functional gastrointestinal disorders (AP-FGIDs) in children are few and results are contradictory. We examined the associations between childhood allergy-related diseases and adolescent AP-FGIDs in general and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) in particular. Method Prospective population-based birth cohort study of 4089 children born in Sweden 1994-1996. We analysed data from 2949 children with complete follow-up at 16 years (y) and no diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease or coeliac disease at 12y or 16y. Asthma, rhinitis, eczema, and food hypersensitivity (FH) were assessed through questionnaires at 1–2y, 4y, 8y, 12y, and 16y. AP-FGIDs and IBS were assessed through questionnaires at 16y and defined according to the Rome III criteria. Associations between childhood allergy-related diseases and any AP-FGID and IBS and 16y respectively were examined using binomial generalized linear models with a log link function and described as relative risk with 95% confidence intervals. Results The prevalence of any AP-FGID and IBS at 16y were 12.0% and 6.0% respectively. Eczema at 1–2y, 4y, and 8y, and FH at 12y and 16y were associated with an increased risk for any AP-FGID at 16y. Asthma and FH at 12y and 16y were associated with an increased risk for IBS at 16y. The relative risk for IBS at 16y increased with increasing number of concurrent allergy-related diseases at 16y, but linear trend for relative risk was only borderline statistically significant (P for trend = 0.05). Conclusions This prospective population-based study demonstrated positive associations between childhood allergy-related diseases and adolescent AP-FGIDs, including IBS, implicating shared pathophysiology among these disorders

CRIM1 is localized to the podocyte filtration slit diaphragm of the adult human kidney

Background. CRIM1 is a plasma membrane bound protein containing six cysteine-rich repeats (CRR). Through these, CRIM1 has been shown to interact with a subgroup of the TGF-β superfamily, the bone morphogenic proteins (BMP) isoforms 2, 4 and 7. The probable action is to modulate the signalling properties of these factors. CRIM1 has also been shown to regulate the release of VEGFA by podocytes during renal organogenesis. Knock-out studies in mice have shown that CRIM1 is critically involved in the development of the central nervous system, eye and kidney. Replacement of CRIM1 with a defective version leads to renal dysgenesis and perinatal death. We have analysed the distribution of CRIM1 in adult human renal tissue

Notch Signaling in Neuroblastoma and Renal Cell Carcinoma

The Notch signaling pathway governs cell functions essential for normal development and organogenesis. Aberrant Notch signaling has been implicated in tumorigenesis by perturbing control of proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, migration and angiogenesis. Neuroblastoma is an embryonal tumor derived from cells of the sympathetic nervous system, arrested at an immature stage of differentiation. Notch signaling is thought to play an important role during the development of the sympathetic nervous system, and prior studies have indicated that dysregulated Notch signaling might be associated with the perturbed differentiation that characterize neuroblastoma cells. Here we show that the histone deacetylase inhibitor valproic acid induced differentiation of neuroblastoma cells, in conjunction with activation of Notch-1 signaling. In addition, we also noted that the expression of the Notch target HES-1 was primarily regulated by ERK-MAP kinase signaling in a neuroblastoma cell line. Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (CCRCC) is characterized by activation of the hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) pathway due to functional loss of the von Hippel-Lindau tumor suppressor gene. However, cooperating oncogenic events parallel to the HIF pathway remains poorly described. Our results presented here imply a growth-promoting role for Notch signaling in CCRCC cells, seemingly independent of HIF-regulated cellular events. Treatment of nude mice bearing CCRCC xenografts, with daily injections of a Notch inhibitor (γ-secretase inhibitor) in cycles of 3 days followed by 4 days without treatment, retarded tumor growth and minimized the adverse effects commonly associated with γ-secretase inhibition. In addition, analysis of primary CCRCC samples revealed that Notch-1 and Jagged-1 were expressed at significantly higher levels compared to normal kidney tissue samples. Finally, we found that inhibition of Notch signaling decreased the migratory potential of CCRCC cells. This effect might be linked to a cross-talk between Notch and TGF-β signaling in CCRCC cells