The moderating effect of firm size: Internationalization of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector

Previous research on the internationalization of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) explored the relationship between adoption of global orientation and competitive advantage, management attitude, and international knowledge and experience. However, there was a difference in opinion between those arguing that there is a positive relationship between these variables and others who contended that there is moderating effect of size on the internationalization. Within this context, this study sets out to further the discussion by comparing the global orientation of SMEs in Malaysia with their different level of size. In doing so, it draws upon the findings of survey of 300 internationalized enterprises located in northern region of Malaysia. The results suggest that size functions as moderating factor for internationalization only for relatively smaller firms. It has its biggest impact when relatively smaller SMEs acquire international knowledge and experience. They also note implications for managers and policy makers

Service quality transformation and its impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty in Malaysian retail banking sector

This paper investigates the importance of antecedents of customer loyalty such as customer satisfaction and service quality dimensions. It addresses whether the dimensions of service quality impacts customer satisfaction eventually leading to customer loyalty. The Structural Equation modeling technique was used in this analysis to determine customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The results suggest that empathy and assurance are the key factors in delivering customer satisfaction, whereas, tangibility, reliability and responsiveness are found to least impacting customer satisfaction. The relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is also found to be very significant. Therefore, the bank managers should focus their resources on improving customer care and assuring the services provided to the bank customers will eventually create customer loyalty towards their banks

Effect of melt temperature on microstructural and strength properties of in-situ aluminum metal matrix composites containing SiCNO particles

Polymer Injection Pyrolysis (PIPs) can be adopted to synthesize in-situ ceramic particles within molten metal by stir-casting process. This paper investigated the effect of pyrolysis temperatures on microstructural and strength properties of in-situ aluminum matrix composites containing 2.5 vol% of SiCNO particles. In-situ composites were synthesized by stir-mixing of cross-linked polysilazane at four different pyrolysis temperatures (675–850°C) at which in-situ pyrolysis occurred and then followed by ultrasonic agitation and squeeze casting process. Microstructural data reveals that grain size and the particle size of SiCNO particles decreases with increasing the temperature of the melt at which polymer was introduced into the melt. The increase in the strength properties of the fabricated composites as compared to pure aluminum is almost 210% for the composites fabricated at 850°C while it is marginally 17% for the composites fabricated at 720°C. Fractography studies suggest that composite fabricated at 675°C exhibits a better combination of yield strength and ductility

Metal nanoparticle assisted growth of assembled zinc oxide nanostructure by low temperature solution phase technique

Herein we report metal nanoparticle directed growth of assembled zinc oxide nanostructures by a facile solution phase route. Si substrates with silver nanoparticles are subjected to low temperature hydrothermal growth. Coulombic attraction resulted in migration of Zn growth species onto Ag nanoparticle surface. SEM analysis revealed preferential nucleation and growth of zinc oxide nanostructures on Ag nanoparticles. Longer reaction period lead to formation of mulberry like assembled ZnO nanostructures. XRD analysis confirmed growth of zinc oxide nanostructures. The formed ZnO nanostructures exhibit well defined band edge PL peak corresponding to excitonic recombination. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

Fatigue monitoring of glass fiber reinforced composite using fiber Bragg grating

Glass fiber reinforced composite (GFRC) are widely used in all load bearing industrial applications. It is therefore critical to understand the fatigue characteristic of GFRC to improve the material characteristics of these composites and to prevent any untoward accidents. In this paper we describe the preliminary results of fatigue test on GFRC fabricated using an in-house laboratory scale resin transfer molding system. The fatigue tests are done for different load conditions – tension compression and reverse bending. Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is embedded into the composite at the manufacturing step for monitoring the strain. The preliminary results of these experiments are presented

Study of local and transient buckling in glass fiber reinforced composite using fiber bragg grating

Many models encountered in computer science remain intractable because of their tremendous complexity. Among them, the numerical modeling of manufacturing processes involving several characteristic times is a challenging issue. Classical incremental methods often fail for solving efficiently such transient models. In that sense model reduction based simulation appears to be a very promising alternative. Multidimensional parametric models can be solved within the context of the Proper Generalized Decomposition (PGD). It opens new horizons regarding time parallelization. Indeed, by no more considering the initial condition of a transient problem as a static input data but as an extra- coordinate similarly to space and time, we demonstrate that it is possible to parallelize efficiently the computation and even reach real-time in some cases