The cost and effect of occupational health hazards: a case study of PROTON manufacturing plant Malaysia / Siti Fairuza Hassam

There are many hidden costs which management erroneously believe do not affect their cost calculation and profit performance as a well. It is actually can be broadly classed as insured and uninsured or hidden costs which arise after a safety and health issues takes place. This research is conducted to study the uninsured cost or hidden costs effect of occupational health hazards mainly focus for Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional Sdn Bhd PROTON manufacturing plant Malaysia. It is aims to determine the relationship between occupational health hazards in workplace with its cost implication (uninsured cost) by focusing on ergonomic, physical, chemical and biological hazards factor. It is measured in terms of working environment conditions, human error and management failure. Meanwhile, identified costs associated which are loss times, training cost, employees’ morale and productivity cost are measured to determine the cost related due to workplace safety and health issues. Besides, it is intended to establish the uninsured cost estimation equation model that can be used in minimizing the cost implication due to major health hazards factor intervention in workplace. With several Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) programs implemented, this research also identified the relationship between these OSH practices with the safety and health issues in the company. A descriptive study is undertaken in order to ascertain and able to describe the major factors of occupational health hazards with the cost implication interest in a workplace situation. A comprehensive questionnaire was designed based on all determined issues and distributed to the employees’ representative through self-administered method. To strengthen the findings gathered, semi-structured interview session was conducted with the Safety Manager of PROTON Malaysia in helping of elaboration and verification for further detail. It was revealed that, physical hazard factor is a most outstanding occupational health hazards followed by chemical hazard factor. Hence to end of this study, final estimated equation for minimize cost calculation due to physical and chemical hazard factors have been suggested ( y = 3.745 + 0.409x1 + 0.344x2). There are also some beneficial recommendations made in minimizing as well as eliminating the cost incurred resulted from the safety and health issues in workplace. Other than determining the major health hazards and its cost implication to the company, this study is also an attempt to motivate employers and employees to improve their health and safety performance as well as to guide them in measuring the costs implication due to health and safety failures

Quality of Service Practices within Business Market: An Automotive Industry Experience

In todays business market, products alone cannot assure vendors success due to the trend of the market where buyers perceived products and services are equally important. To face this current development, vendors are forced to offer added values to their products. Excellent quality of service is one of the options available because it can lead to the buyers satisfaction, and ultimately, loyalty. To date, little is known about the quality of service practices in the Malaysian Automotive Industry. Therefore, the case study was conducted to understand the practices better. It was investigated in the language of the actors in the industry specifically the buyers. In-depth interviews were conducted to explore the quality of service practices which were felt to be crucial to this study. A hermeneutics analysis method was employed in analyzing the data. Results from the case studies indicated that quality of service practices has played significant roles in the Malaysian Automotive Industry. In addition, the practices are consistent with the four main principles in a buyer-vendor relationship within the automotive industry. This is in line with the current market trend

Contributing Factors of Production Performance in the Food Processing Industry

The main purpose of this study is to determine the factors that can contribute to the production performance in the food industry. This study can help to identify the contributing factors towards the production performance. Five factors were identified based on the past literature. 100 food processing manufacturers with the majority coming from small and medium industries (SME) have been selected. The purposive sampling technique has been selected for this study with the total number of usable questionnaires received being from 80 respondents. The collected data was analysed using SmartPLS 3.0 to test the relationships between the independent variables and the dependent variable of the study. The results showed that the Total Quality Management (TQM), Lean Management (LM), and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP)significantly influenced the production performance. The practical implications of these outcomes are further discussed in the study

Factors That Influence Green Practices Adoption Amongst Logistics Services Providers

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that influence the green practices adoption amongst third party logistics services providers in Penang, Malaysia. The factors used in the study included technology (relative advantages, compatibility, and complexity), organisation (organisational support and quality of human resources), and environment (stakeholder pressure, governmental support, and environmental uncertainty). Purposive sampling has been used as the sampling method in this study. The data gained from the questionnaires have been analysed using SmartPLS 3.0 software. The findings show that relative advantages, compatibility, organisational support, quality of human resources, stakeholder pressure, and governmental support influences the green practices adoption. On the other hand, complexity and environmental uncertainty were found to have insignificant impacts towards the green practices adoption. The outcome of this study demonstrates practical implications for the managers by providing evidence of the critical factors to adopt the green practices amongst the third-party logistics services providers

Factors that Lead to the Supply Chain Safety Compliance in Air Cargo Industry

This study aims to determine the factors that lead to the supply chain safety compliance in Air Cargo in Malaysia. By using the purposive sampling technique, the questionnaires were distributed to the selected respondents for the gathering of data and analysis purposes. It was found that, organisational commitment, employee involvement, and safety training factors have a positive significant influence towards supply chain safety compliance evaluation. Moreover, the safety training factor showed the most significant influence as compared to the others. However, the study found the insignificant relationships between personal protective equipment (PPE) factor with supply chain safety compliance in workplace practices. Workers were lacked awareness on how to comply with safety regulations, especially when it came to wearing safety equipment while handling the movement of material in supply chain processes. This will be a main concern of industry, especially for the Air Cargo Industry, to take more proactive steps in tackling the safety compliance issues occurrences and in achieving the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) best practices in supply chain activities related