Learning Factory Concept and Development at Faculty of Industrial Management, Universiti Malaysia Pahang

One of the key resources for the organization to sustain in the competitive business world is the employee’s competencies. Current business environment requires employees who are competent to adapt to ever-changing the business environment as a result of globalization and changes in customer’s requirement. The current teaching and training methods used in the universities is lacking a continuous delivery of competencies, especially in manufacturing education. One of the approaches that are becoming popular in developing student’s competencies is through the application of the learning factory concept. A learning factory represents a simulation of a real factory environment where students can gain hands-on the learning experience by conducting various projects. This paper will, therefore, present the process of setting up a learning factory and discuss how the learning factory can be used to support the teaching and learning process in a public technical university. This study was performed at the Faculty of Industrial Management, Universiti Malaysia Pahang. The purpose of the development of such a learning factory is to enable the students to attained hands-on experience on the concepts they have learned during class lecture and see how it can be applied in the real world

Ammonia Gas Leak Alert System for Laboratory Using MQ-135 Gas Sensor and GSM Application

Mobile Alert System for Ammonia Gas Leak using Arduino and GSM application is a system that helps to detect the presence of ammonia gas in the laboratory thus alerting the person in charge such as laboratory technician. The system is based on Arduino UNO, GSM SIM900 module, and MQ-135 gas sensor. The prototype consists of a single sensor, which is MQ-135 gas sensor that is mainly responsible for detecting ammonia gas. The function of this prototype is whenever the ammonia gas is detected within the gas sensor’s range inside the laboratory, it will trigger an alarm sound thus giving an alert message to the laboratory technician. Besides, this project has also identified the best placement to implement the sensor in the laboratory. It is based on the analysis of different distances between the gas sensor and the gas released. This system is very beneficial to the people who are using the laboratory because it can give immediate alert to them for fast action in case when there is a chemical accident occurs that releases harmful gas without anyone noticing it. Furthermore, when there is an increase of distance between the gas sensor and the gas released, the response time required to trigger the alert would also increase. Hence, the optimal implementation to place the gas sensor would be at a range of 80 cm from the gas sensor to the gas chamber, as it requires the shortest time to trigger the alert with a reasonable distance

Pressures on manufacturing industry to practice green supply chain management in Malaysia

Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) has received increasing attention, at least in recent decades. During this time, it has become apparent that are significant complexities in its management. From both a practical and research perspective, there is a need to simplify and understand this complexity. To further deepen the understanding of the problem, institutional theory, which consists of three institutional pressures, namely government pressure (coercive pressure), market pressure (normative pressure) and competitive pressure (mimetic pressure), was used to investigate the relationship between institutional pressure and GSCM practices in the manufacturing industry in Malaysia. Data were collected using questionnaires in different Malaysian manufacturing companies. The hypotheses were tested using SmartPLS 3. The results from the 118 respondents showed that the command and control instrument and competitive pressure supported the hypothesis, while the economic incentives instrument and market pressure did not support the hypothesis. Finally, the enactment of stringent environmental regulations by the government was found to be most effective in promoting the adoption of GSCM practices

Factors that influence abandoned housing project: An IPMA analysis on the Malaysian construction industry

Abandoned construction is one of the problems that faced by company and organization that involved in a construction project. This issue has badly affected the development in the cities and may cause social and community problems. This is a concern that may hinder the steps to achieve sustainable development goals. Thus, this research objective is to study the factor that influences the abandoned housing project in Malaysia. Quantitative method is used in this study where 63 respondents were involved in this survey. The Important Performance Map Analysis (IPMA) was used to analyse the data. This analysis is crucial to identify the critical factors that contribute to an abandoned housing project. The result showed that the financial factor and project controlling and monitoring was the critical factor causing abandoned housing project while the contract and procurement, sourcing and design, and external factor have a lower effect. The findings of this research contribute valuable knowledge and solutions to the developer and policy maker, hence enable them to make informed decisions to avoid future incomplete housing project

A study on the environmental technological innovation strategy of a Malaysian firm

Firms all over the world have pursued sustainable development to be competitive in the marketplace. The purpose of this case study is to examine the factors that enable a firm to pursue the environmental technological innovation (ET-innovation) strategies and how it effectively leverages its resources to achieve the environmental and business targets. This case study also wants to understand how well the firms ET-innovation activities can be explained by stakeholder theory, resource-based view and dynamic of innovation model. This paper uses a qualitative approach and the coding analysis was done on QSR NVivo. The data collection was done through interviews and also compared with other data sources (company brochures, reports, letters, speeches, memos, videos, newspaper articles, trade magazine articles, magazines articles, reports, website articles and technical reports) for triangulation purposes. This research showed that the ET-innovative firm in this case study has leveraged their employee technical abilities to be successful in their respective market. Another factor is the owner’s high interest in innovation and environmental protection, and involvement in the design and marketing of their eco-product. Despite stakeholders’ different targets, the case study firm manages to acquire support from their stakeholders through common objective which is to see a successful ET-innovation. Finally, it is proposed for the firm to be aware of the dynamics of eco-product lifecycle while also use current tools to manage their eco-product development especially in the earlier development stage

Developing and validating measurement for manufacturing flexibility implementation strategies: The PLS-SEM approach

Manufacturing flexibility (MF) has been acknowledged as tool to help manufacturers adapting to uncertainty in the business environment. Fluctuating market demand, rapid technological changes, shorter product life cycles and increase level of customization are among the caused that create uncertainties in the market. However, manufacturers are facing great challenge to reap the real benefit from implementing manufacturing flexibility. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the contributing factors that can enhance manufacturing flexibility implementation in mass customization production strategy among manufacturing firms in Malaysia. An extensive review on manufacturing flexibility literature and content validity assessment were conducted with industry practitioners and academicians. Four MF constructs and 16 measurement items have been identified from the review. A complete set of questionnaires have been developed by adopting, adapting, or self-develop based on the extensive literature review. This research study has recognized reliable MF constructs, consisting of four MF constructs and 16 measurement items. Thus, this study can be used to help identify provide method to enhance MF implementation at the manufacturing firm’s level. This study provided a useful tool for researchers to gain a greater knowledge and understanding on MF implementation. It acts to bridge the inadequacy of related studies on manufacturing flexibility by using the T-O-E framework. For practitioners, it is useful to review back the effectiveness of the usage of their internal resources in overcoming uncertainties in the environmental factors. More significantly, practitioners should be able to adopt the MF practices in a more holistic way. This study is among the first attempt to develop MF constructs for evaluating the enhancement of MF implementation in Malaysia

Managing inventory in the small and medium entreprises food and beverage industry

Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) has been recognized as a platform in the economic development in Malaysia where it contributes to more than one-third of the Malaysian economy. SMEs industry help to fulfil the market demand and create more job opportunity. However, many SMEs companies faced a common challenge on their business which disrupted their performance and business continuity. Disruption in maintaining the efficiency of inventory management contribute to significant loss to business performance. Therefore, this research has observed some inventory problems faced by purchasing department at Rasa ABC Enterprise, proposed a solution and evaluated the usefulness/ease of use by using project management steps of initiation, planning, evaluation and analysis. This research has also identified the main issue at Rasa ABC Enterprise using the Ishikawa Diagram and found that the root cause is lack of efficiency in inventory management system. Thus this paper has proposed a solution to use a simple interface, user-friendly, convenient, and cost-effective software. Based on the questionnaires that has been distributed, the workers find the software as useful and easy to be used

Thematic analysis: factors of food safety certification adoption among farmers in Malaysia

Purpose – This study aims to identify the factors to food safety certification adoption among farmers in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach – This study was conducted qualitatively using a method of interviewing with unstructured questions. To identify the factors that influence and prevent the adoption of food safety certification among Malaysian farmers, nine (n ¼ 9) agricultural industrial experts were randomly chosen. Findings – Based on data analysis using thematic analysis, the respondent highlighted 14 factors to food safety certification. Specifically, the most frequent determinant highlighted by the respondent is enforcement (12). Additionally, it has been proven that the identified factors aligned with existing theories: technology, organization and environment (TOE) framework and eco-innovation theory. These theories help researchers to create effective strategies and produce significant findings from their research. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate food safety certification adoption among farmers in the Malaysian agriculture industry using the integration of the TOE framework and eco-innovation theory. The stakeholder is expected to receive the benefits of creating efficient campaigns to encourage more farmers to obtain food safety certification. This study provides further knowledge by improving the understanding of the processes involved in certification adoption, providing context-specific insights, best practices, policy guiding development and emphasizing the effects of certification on sustainability and competitiveness

Environmental technological innovation and market demand: is market orientation a missing link?

Environmental technological innovation has becoming an important step towards sustainable development for emerging country like Malaysia, and market demand is an important determinant of environmental technological innovation.However, stakeholders have neglected demandbased perspective, while designing policies centered on technological (supply) side view.Extant research also constructs a direct mechanism for the market demand–ecoinnovation link.The research reported here, however, provides and investigates an indirect market demand-environmental technological innovation argument where market orientation is a mediator.The current study is motivated to produce this conceptual model for the benefit of policy makers and industry alik

Understanding social media usage at work from the perspective of social capital theory

With the pervasive use of social media (SM) in organizations, it is regarded as a relevant driver that can influence an employee’s job performance. This study fills in the gap that extends the job performance concept by discovering the role of SM in innovative performance in introducing new ideas beyond standard specifications to produce novel and valuable organizational outcomes. By adopting the social capital theory (SCT), the present study investigates the roles of social media use at work in predicting social capital (network ties, shared vision, and trust) that might promote work engagement and subsequently affect employees’ innovative job performance. The data was collected through an online survey, and 291 Malaysian employees participated. The partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique was applied in data analysis for the measurement model and structural model used in this study. Findings show that SM use at work significantly predicts network ties, shared vision, and trust. Besides, network ties and trust positively promoted work engagement except for shared vision. Subsequently, work engagement was associated with innovative job performance. This study provides theoretical and practical implications for extending knowledge, as well as mitigating plans and efforts to resolve employees’ performance concerning the issues of SM use at work