Managing disaster preparedness for institution of higher learning: A study in Perlis

Unprecedented floods disaster that hit Johore, Pahang, Terengganu and Kelantan was due to abnormal weather conditions. Heavy rain which fall continuously non stop for between 3 to 4 days has raised the water level in some areas to a height of 15 feet deep. The flood disasters have caused devastating loss of property and life and some 100,000 people were evacuated to flood relief centers. Some of the floods victim lost all their belonging and property. Flood disaster has also caused water borne diseases to prevail. The future is bleak for these flood victims. Continuous government assistance is needed for these flood victims who lost everything is needed. Year in and year out, the monsoon season have cause floods disaster especially in the east coast state and is now a yearly common phenomena. However, the level of awareness and preparedness among the Malaysian community and the government machinery is still questionably low. Presently, there are 18 public universities in the country, the issue is what is the level of awareness does students and staff of the university put on the issue of floods or other natural disaster? Do we at the University are ready to face disaster situations if it occur in the University? At this juncture, the experiences of UniMAP’s contribution to the University’s community, the local community vis-à-vis the Malaysian Mechanism Disaster Management and functioning alongside the state machinery of Perlis state government during 17 December 2005 flood disaster can be used as an example. The aim of this study is to examine the disaster preparedness in University and to propagate the importance of disaster preparedness among the students and staffs through education. This pilot project will be conducted through interviews, observations and surveys. It is expected that this study will shed some light for further effective implementation of disaster preparedness management

Identifying and Prioritizing Research Gaps in Studies related to Total Quality Management on Competitive Advantage in Malaysian Hotel Industries

Determining research gaps is a cardinal goal in literature review. While it has been diffusely conceded that literature reviews should determine research gaps, no methodological orientation is available on how to pinpoint research gaps amidst review of literature or to assure rigor and replicability. Hence, this study addresses this gap and puts forward a simple prototype that should assist scholars in this endeavour without suppressing creativity. Based on the study outcomes, a technique has been generated to identify research gaps, so as to enable scholars to conduct a more rigorous, effective, and efficient literature reviews henceforth

Assessing the ideology of total quality management towards hotel sustainability performance: empirical evidence using structural equation modelling

Total quality management (TQM) practices are one of the remarkable management initiatives adopted by the hotel industry to conserve the environment and ameliorate the quality of life while executing activities. Due to the existence of the value creation notion, economic value is no longer the only prerequisite assessing hotel sustainability performance, environmental and social aspects should also be considered when evaluating sustainability performance. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between TQM practices and sustainability performance, taking into account the environmental, economic and social aspects. A questionnaire survey is conducted among 238 hotels with ISO 9001 certification in Malaysia. Structural equation modelling is employed to assess the relationship between TQM practices and sustainability performance. The findings of this study reveal that employee management has the most significant impact on sustainability performance. Hence, it is posited that the hotels in Malaysia are extremely concentrated on employee engagement in the implementation of TQM practices to accomplish sustainability objective

THE IMPACT OF TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT (TQM) ON COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: A CONCEPTUAL MIXED METHOD STUDY IN THE MALAYSIA LUXURY HOTEL INDUSTRIES

The widespread use of TQM has impacted the hotel industry worldwide and increasingly identified as the key issue in differentiating service products and building competitive advantage in tourism. Accordingly, hotel industries may face a wide variety of saturated and uncertain TQM practices available for their organization nowadays. As there is a lack of comprehensive knowledge regarding TQM issuesin hotel industry, there is an urgent need for a process which will assist hotel industries in Malaysia to evaluate these TQM practices and select the most appropriate one in order to provide the ideal management practices for the entire organization. As such, this study will propose a mixed method study where 10 hotel managers are initially interviewed, followed by a quantitative study of 122 additional managers. The aim of this study is to assist the hoteliers for identifying the proper TQM practices andthen evaluating the available practices that best fitted the hotel industry in Malaysia which could concomitantly help the Ministry of Tourism and Culture (MOTAC) to achieve its National Key Economic Area (NKEA) and contributing towards high nation incomein 2020

Exploring the TQM best practices in Malaysia hotel industry using Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach: A conceptual analysis

Quality has become a fundamental issue for organizational success in today’s dynamic business environment particularly hotel industry as it affects the stakeholders which involve government, employers, employees as well as the end users. Total Quality Management (TQM) has seen as a revolution in management whereby it not only began to exert its vigorous effect on national business system but also referred as an comprehensive approach for total organizational performance improvement. TQM literature has been widely addressed and many researchers evaluated the gaps in TQM to achieve organizational performance. However, the literature does not seem to agree on a universal framework for the implementation of TQM philosophy in hotel settings. This paper emphasizes the importance level of inter-dependency among the TQM which has rarely been explored in the preceding studies. A novel hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) model is used to address the dependence relationships of factors with the aid of grey relational analysis, Analytical Network Process (ANP) and Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL). The initial model of the study is designed by considering main criteria and sub-criteria of TQM using interview method. DEMATEL is employed to construct interrelations among criteria and sub-criteria in the integrated model. By using this approach, the inter-dependencies strength among the criteria and sub-criteria is tested. The ANP method is then applied in order to determine the relative importance of the TQM and used to identify how TQM are weighted and prioritized by the management representatives (MR) or hotel top management. The development of this MCDM model will assist Malaysia hotels in identifying the key elements and factors that need to be thoroughly considered and managed for achieving competitive advantage as well as be a guide for hotel entities to invent new quality management practices or improve existing management policies

Green technology implementation: The impact of communication networks and technology characteristics

Malaysia was, in fact, among the first Southeast Asian nations to slot in environmental concerning actors and factors in its long-range economic plans and strategies.To develop green technology the government takes some effective initiatives like the establishment of a great amount of fund to provide soft loan to companies that supply and utilized green technology.However, adopting of environment friendly technology can be slow if the new technological innovations are not impressive in terms of the firms" inducements, or if the firms do not have adequate data and information to evaluate whether or not switching to a green technology is in their private interests, to analyze their cost and benefits regarding new measures.Adoption of green technologies might encompass a high degree of uncertainty and, warrants considerable attention within a manufacturing company at the strategic level. Hence, the process to attain required way to achieve achievement with this technology is an issue that demands to be investigated.With the aim of providing information on the subject matter, this paper put it full phase efforts and concentrations on the influence of the two factors on green technology adoption. These factors are technology characteristics and communication networks.Based on the data analysis from a survey conducted on a sample of 76 companies, it was found that there are significant relationships between the two factors and green technology implementation

Improvement on Bill of Materials Formatting Process by Adopting Lean and Six Sigma Approaches - A Case Study in a Semiconductor Industry

This paper present an improvement project for the case of Bill of Materials (BOM) formatting process by adopting Lean and Six Sigma approaches. Currently, BOM formatting process involved repetitive tasks, where many of manual touches (manual computer mouse clicks), thus consumed a significant amount of time. The focus of Lean approach in this project is to identify and analyze the related wastes in the current BOM formatting process.  Several Lean tools are applied such as, Root Cause, Five Whys analysis and Value Stream Mapping (VSM) concept to analyze the problem. Six Sigma approach plays an important role to systematically carry out the improvement project based on it well known method called; Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (DMAIC). This paper gives an insight that the right application of Lean and Six Sigma approaches will significantly helped an organization to achieve operational excellence, where in this project it happens at BOM formatting process. Through this project, the case study company has improved (reducing) the BOM processing time from average 50 to 5 minutes, while manual touches reduced from 290 to 30 touches only. Furthermore, elimination of these wastes (waiting and motion) has increase work efficiency and contributes to a significant financial savings to $1680 per month

Application of lean six sigma methodology to improve the weight inconsistency problem of coffee powder packaging

This paper presents a continuous improvement (CI) project based on the application of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology. This project was carried out at coffee manufacturing industry located in northern area of Malaysia. The focus of this presented CI project is to improve the weight inconsistency problem of coffee powder packaging. The presented CI project was mainly guided with Six Sigma methodology of Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (DMAIC) steps, and related Lean tools applications. The step of Define summaries the overall view of CI project. In the step of Measure, current level of sigma based on defect per million of opportunities (DPMO) calculation was determined. Initially, 6% of rejected products were recorded, which it presents the sigma level at 3.1. In the step of Analyze, a series of team-based activities towards root cause identification was carried out. It included the applications of cause effect (CE) analysis and possible causes prioritization and close observations on packaging process. In the step of Improve, the related Lean tool was proposed to improve the problem under study. In the final step of Control, related supportive actions were suggested to sustain the effectiveness of the proposed solution. There are fourteen possible causes are initially identified in CE analysis and based on team’s evaluation process of possible causes prioritization four causes are collectively to be the most possible of root cause(s). Three close observation sessions were carried out to finalize the most possible root cause of the problem. Result strongly suggested that the high variation of coffee powder’s size and inconsistency is the root cause. An improvement strategy based on Lean Manufacturing approach called ‘poka yoke’ is proposed. The proposed improvement strategy was then validated based on real packaging process scenario. Result shows that the proposed improvement strategy is significantly effective to solve the problem with 0% of reject product was recorded so far, where it is not only produced the product within the acceptable weight of 215 and 208 grams, but also presents the reduction of weight fluctuation that close to ideal weight of 208 grams

Industry 4.0 Readiness of Technology Companies: A Pilot Study from Malaysia

Industry 4.0 has the potential to cause both evolutionary (operational) and revolutionary (strategic) changes, but assessing the readiness of companies towards Industry 4.0 has largely been a challenge. Industry 4.0 readiness is also important as it is the first step for companies that want to adopt Industry 4.0 technologies. This paper pilot surveys 100 technology companies in Malaysia to understand their overall readiness towards Industry 4.0. In particular, this research paper contributes to the assessment of Industry 4.0 readiness in terms of seven key areas: (i) Market pressure, (ii) risk-taking, (iii) knowledge, (iv) management support, (v) competencies, (vi) motivation and (vii) freedom. These findings can act as stepping stones for managers and companies that are aiming towards the implementation of Industry 4.0 readiness