Assessing the trade and transport facilitation performance: a manufacturer's perspective / Mohd. Azlan Abu Bakar

Practitioners and academics agreed that logistics performance significantly influence the efficiency and effectiveness of firm performance. This is because the differentiation in values that customers receive from logistics activities would create the firm’s competitive advantage. Presently, in the global supply chain network, logistics performance measurements are not only referred to firm performance, but also cover the entire logistics supply chain and trade facilitation. It aims to maximise the efficiency of procedures and control governing the movement of goods across national border. Presently, the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) constructs developed by Arvis et al. (2014) were used to determine the overall performance of Malaysian logistics industry. Additionally, environment-friendly was considered vital due to the fact that minimise the amount of emissions in transport operations (Pazirandeh & Jafari, 2013) as well as productions. Six constructs were assessed by the professionals in manufacturing firms, namely customs efficiency, logistics infrastructure, logistics cost, logistics effectiveness, quality of logistics services and environment-friendly. The assessment was based on 129 usable questionnaires from various industries to assess logistics performance. Further analysis were carried out to determine the effects of the six constructs and logistics performance. The Partial Least Square - Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) approach was used to identify two main objectives, namely the effect of trade and transport facilitation, and the key constructs from the logistics performance model. The results demonstrate that three key determinant factors i.e. customs efficiency, logistics infrastructure, and competence and quality of logistics services mostly reflect the overall logistics performance in Malaysia. However, logistics cost and environment-friendly were found to have negative effects on logistics performance. Despite these findings, results showed that customs efficiency and logistics infrastructure indirectly affect logistics cost. Thus the results indicated that both custom efficiency and logistics infrastructure have the potential to minimise the logistics cost in Malaysia. This study contributes to the body of knowledge through the establishment of relationship between trade transport facilitation and logistics performance in Malaysia from the manufacturing firms’ perspectives. It also provides insight on a different perspective of logistics performance for Malaysia

Intelligent profile analysis graduate entrepreneur (iPage) system using business intelligence technology

The increase use of information in Malaysia Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) is resulted from the process of huge and complex data in several stages and at different locations.This situation leads to the difficulties of data management and problematic usage for decision making. Business Intelligence (BI), which is, the process of collecting, analyzing, and transforming data using Data Warehouse (DW) is seen as one of the growing approaches to provide meaningful information.The MOHE is responsible for managing various activities to promote the graduate entrepreneurs to venture into the business and ensure the country has many successful entrepreneurs.Therefore, systematic and accurate information needs to be available for planning, implementation, and monitoring entrepreneurs' performances.This paper proposes the modeling and designing of the graduate entrepreneur profile application called Intelligent Profile Analysis Graduate Entrepreneur (iPAGE) using BI technologies and supporting by a DW approach.Two main methodologies were used namely: Requirements Centric Operational Data Store (ReCODS) and Rapid Application Development (RAD) to develop this system.The iPAGE system was validated and evaluated by iPAGE users and DW experts.It is used to be a guideline for the development of an entrepreneur information system in the future

Electrical resistivity and induced polarization techniques for groundwater exploration

Abstract: Electrical resistivity and induced polarization surveys have been conducted for groundwater exploration at two different sites of geological aged i.e. Carboniferous and Quaternary. This study discussed the earth materials resistivity and chargeability for metasedimentary rock and unconsolidated sediment for groundwater exploration at Kampung Jongok Batu, Dungun and Kampung Paya Rawa, Besut, respectively. For this study Terrameter LS2, cable, electrode, cable connector, battery and remote cable are tools for measurement. The spacing between electrodes is 5 m, maximum length of spread line is 400 m and using Pole-Dipole protocol. Via comparing between the resistivity and chargeability values able to provide better interpretation for ground water exploration for metasedimentary rock and unconsolidated quaternary sediment. The result shows the important of chargeability for refining the resistivity value for locating the groundwater position.Â

Protecting small business against unfair contract terms: a comparative study between Malaysia, United Kingdom and Australia / Nurul Hidayah Abu Bakar …[et al.]

The law on unfair contract terms affecting small businesses have been regulated differently in different countries. Some countries provide statutory protection as a means of protection towards small businesses and adopt legislative approach in dealing with unfair terms, such as Australia and the United Kingdom, while some countries such as Malaysia, only rely on legal doctrines and judicial approach. These differences called for a comparative study to be done to analyses critically whether small businesses need to be protected against unfair contract terms. For the purpose of this research, three countries are selected as a comparative model, which were Malaysia, Australia and the United Kingdom

Pelarian dana: bukti baharu peranan modal manusia

Masalah pelarian dana telah diselidik sejak awal tahun 1980-an. Namun kajian sedia ada hanya tertumpu kepada memperbaiki kaedah pengiraan pelarian dana dan faktor utama punca pelarian dana. Kajian ini mengorak selangkah lagi kehadapan dengan mengkaji faktor yang mampu untuk mengurangkan kesan negatif daripada dua faktor utama pelarian dana iaitu kesan risiko ekonomi dan risiko institusi melalui saluran pengukuhan modal manusia. Tujuan kajian ini adalah untuk menyelidik hubungan antara pelarian dana dan modal manusia dengan menggunakan kaedah sistem panel dinamik. Hasil kajian menunjukkan bahawa pekali regrasi modal manusia mempunyai hubungan negatif dengan aktiviti pelarian dana. Dapatan ini menerangkan bahawa modal manusia mampu mengurangkan aktiviti pelarian dana dengan meningkatkan keyakinan pelabur untuk melabur dan mengekalkan pelaburan sedia ada. Oleh itu polisi yang digubal untuk menangani masalah pelarian dana semestinya mengambil kira faktor pengukuhan sektor modal manusia

Investigating performance of transformer health index in machine learning application using dominant features

Transformer Health Index (HI) has become a standard tool for performing transformer health evaluations. Due to economic constraints, the recently published paper focuses on developing various techniques to identify the most dominant features for transformer HI prediction. However, the fundamental problems concerning their input features remain unresolved since most suggested features contradict industry practice. In this paper, the primary objective is to investigate the performance of the transformer HI by developing and utilizing only dominant features following the industry recommendation. The investigated dominant features in this paper using 1) CO2/CO ratio and 2) the Incipient fault for detecting temperature abnormalities, and 3) the Dissipation Factor (DF) for detecting oil contamination. The performance validation is carried out using various machine learning (ML) classifiers. Also, the performance of the ML model is validated based on 10-fold type cross-validation to avoid biases in the experiment. As a result, the proposed Artificial Neural Network (ANN) network utilizing the investigated dominant features following the industry practice has produced the highest average accuracy of 80.09% than others ML techniques as a classifier. Hence, additional studies to complement the investigated dominant features may be considered for the subsequent investigation

Portable heart valve disease screening device using electronic stethoscope

Heart sound analysis has been a popular topic of studies since a few decades ago. Most of the studies are done in PC platform since embedding the complex algorithm into a simple small device such as microcontroller board seems to be very difficult due to limited processing speed and memory. This study classifies normal and abnormal heart sound signal from four categories of Heart Valve Disease. An automated system that consists of segmentation, feature extraction and classification of the heart sound signal is developed in PC and hardware platforms. A multimedia board completed with a single board computer, audio codec and graphic LCD is used to make a portable heart valve disease screening device with electronic stethoscope as the input for the system. Both system recorded 96.3% specificity. However, the portable device has only 77.78% sensitivity and 87.04% accuracy compared to PC platform that have sensitivity and accuracy of more than 90%

Reconfigurable Enhanced Path Metric Updater Unit for Space Time Trellis Code Viterbi Decoder

Space Time Trellis Code (STTC) encoding and decoding techniques are effective for delivery of a reliable information because of the signal to noise ratio is very small. Even though the Viterbi algorithm is complicated to be designed, these methods typically used large memory space to store the information that have been processed mainly at the Path Metric Updater (PMU). Therefore, an effective memory management technique is one of the key factors in designing the STTC Viterbi decoder for low power consumption applications. This paper proposed the PMU memory reduction technique especially on Traceback activities that usually required a lot of memories for storing the data that has been processed in the past part by using Altera Quartus 2 and 0.18 µm Altera CPLD 5M570ZF256C5 as targeted hardware. Through this method, the reduction achieved at least 66% of memory requirements and 75% improvements in processing time without a significanct effects on the outputs results of the STTC Viterbi Decoder for 4-PSK modulation technique by using 50MHz clocks

Friction and wear analysis of ceramic cutting tool made from Alumina-Zirconia-Chromia

This research focused on the friction and wear analysis of ceramic cutting tool made from Al2O3, ZrO2 and Cr2O3. 80 wt% of Al2O3 and 20 wt% of ZrO2 compacts were prepared by ball milling process with Cr2O3 addition at the variation of 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 wt%. Each sample was pressed by Cold Isostatic Press at 350 MPa before sintered at the constant temperature of 1400oC and 9 hours soaking time. Relative density, hardness, flexural strength and Pin-on-disc tribotest were performed for each sample. The samples with desired mechanical properties were further machined with AISI 1045 at the cutting speed of 200 m/min, 0.175 mm/rev feed rate and 0.5 mm depth of cut. The results show the sample with composition ratio of Al2O3-ZrO2-Cr2O3 at 80-20-0.6 wt% demonstrated lowest Coefficient of Friction (COF) of 0.23 with hardness and relative density recorded at 71.3 Hrc and 95.81% respectively. Microstructure of Al2O3-ZrO2-Cr2O3 presenting significant grains compaction as compared to Al2O3-ZrO2 and single Al2O3 that showed significant appearance of porosity. In terms of tool wear, Al2O3- ZrO2-Cr2O3 performed 51% and 800% better tool life than Al2O3-ZrO2 and Al2O3 cutting tools

Smart parking systems by using Espresso Lite 2.0

There are more and more vehicles on the road in every country, which have to be parked in spaces that are becoming increasingly packed. This is a big challenge especially for city planners, architects, and building owners. To meet this demand, the innovative and space saving-parking system is created. This is the new way of technology that can be applied to all users and it is more efficient than the previous parking systems. All buildings including hospitals, government building, shopping complex can access and apply this technology. This paper proposed a program that combined with the iOS system and connected through wireless connection. In addition, it will be connected to the mobile phones using this technology. Before the data can be displayed, the mobile phone has to be installed with BLINK's application that can be downloaded from the apple store. After this application is installed, then apps will show the available parking slot in the specific parking area. Any parking spaces can be assessed anywhere and anytime as long as users have internet connection to their smartphones. This paper proposed to develop the iOS apps that can show and update the parking spaces that are available and the hardware is designed by using ESPresso Lite 2.0 board