DYNAMIC SAFETY INTERACTIONS FOR IMPROVING QUALITY OF WORK LIFE: A PROPOSED CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR ENGINEERS IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

In Malaysia's manufacturing industry, workplace accidents and injuries are a big problem. This industry has made only minor progress in terms of reducing fatalities and significant injuries. The fatal injury rate decreased marginally; however, the previous year's severe injury rate stayed unchanged. (Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH), 2021). As a result, manufacturing safety continues to be a severe issue in Malaysia. The organisational nature of industrial accidents has been highlighted in safety literature, and empirical study has focused on determining the organisational, managerial, and environmental elements that influence accident causation. The majority of prior works have emphasised the concept of safety culture (or safety climate). Scholars have recently begun to look into additional organisational elements, such as the impact of organisational environment, leadership style, and occupational stressors on industrial accidents. This study presents a conceptual framework to investigate the interaction between safety climate and safety behaviour in Malaysia's manufacturing sector, with the goal of developing more effective safety interventions to reduce accidents.

JAVANESE CULTURAL BOUNDARIES TO USE ERP SOFTWARE: MSMEs PERSPECTIVE

Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) have a major role in the resilience of the economy in Indonesia. Therefore, the development of MSMEs is the concern of many parties. One of them is to help MSMEs to get better at using information system technology. Covid-19 pandemic has encouraged the transformation of business management to increase information technology implementation. The use of ERP in business improvement is a must in the era of information digitization. By using an ethnographic approach to identified problems, this study examines factors that can be the key to successful ERP implementation in MSMEs. This study uses several MSMEs with various business sectors but joined in the same group. The group is a combination of MSMEs who are currently testing the implementation of a new ERP-based application. The process of acceptance of the application of the new ERP system turned out to be strongly influenced by the culture of the individual and the culture of the participant group. Our research focused on Javanese culture's impact on MSMEs. We found that Javanese as the most Indonesian-dominated culture has a great impact on MSMEs behaviour. Our result shows that common Javanese ethnic culture dominated their behaviour. Their behaviour tends refer to three concepts: madu basa, madu rasa, and madu brata (Sutarto, 2006). There are some characteristics in our sample. There are tend to avoid uncertainty, use a personal approach to avoid confrontation in their business, easily adapt to different conditions. They also tend to be cynical and pessimistic, including in addressing the information needs for their business. The results of the qualitative analysis carried out found that certain cultural elements have limited the success of ERP implementation in MSMEs.

STRATEGIC CHALLENGES FOR SUCCESSFUL PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN THE ERA OF COVID-19 ENDEMIC

In project management, strategic challenges are likely to be issues or contentions that can have a significant impact on project success. Often project success depends upon how timely and effective strategic implementations were undertaken. Nowadays, Project-based organization cultures are observing a seemingly ever-increasing pace of change and evolving with emerging new technologies. Digital technologies are impacting the dynamics of workplaces by rapidly changing competitive thinking amongst employees including their horizontal and vertical collaborations. After the recent unprecedented times during Covid 19 pandemic, the working methodologies to accommodate remote work cultures have been inculcated into the organizations. This has led to change management, accountability, and productivity determination as a more stern challenge for strategic developments. Additionally, keeping the team focussed and strategically aligned with the organizational mission and vision has become a vital project management aspect. The objective of this article is to explain the strategic challenges faced by project management in strategy implementation in project-based organizations and the possible solutions to the challenges. The ways of succeeding with these challenges effectively are to put more consideration on strategy implementation and develop new strategies to meet with future technology advancements. Moreover, Management should articulate their strategy of how to improve employee capabilities and skills in certain job positions coupled with new technology, which can enhance behavioural strategies for employees. The study will contribute further on new knowledge to the existing body of knowledge on strategy implementation challenges faced by Project management. The study also established that employees' resistance to change and lack of skills to some extent affected the implementation of strategies within the organizations. However, practicing proper change management in the organization can minimize the resistance. The knowledge gained through this research will thus be useful in improving the overall performance of Projects.

EXPLORING THE LINK BETWEEN SAFETY VARIABLES AND WELL-BEING OUTCOMES IN MALAYSIAN MANUFACTURING SECTOR: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

In Malaysia’s manufacturing industry, workplace mishaps and injuries are a big problem. This industry has made only minor developments in terms of reducing fatalities and significant injuries. The fatality rate has decreased marginally; however, the previous year’s severe injury rate remains unchanged (Department of Occupational Safety and Health, 2021). In Malaysia’s aspiration into becoming an advanced country by 2020, reducing occupational mishaps and injuries is one of the key employments concerns it aims to address. As a substantial determinant of mishaps and safety behaviour, the perception of the work setting is considered essential. Safety measures must emphasise the way employees view their work setting in order to improve safety plans and practices. Safety policy and procedures must bring about a shift in employees’ mindsets and awareness of their immediate work setting in order to succeed in the intervention towards the shift in behaviour. This study proposes a conceptual framework to examine the interaction between safety climates, safety behaviour towards the quality of work-life, and psychological well-being within Malaysia’s manufacturing industry that would assist in the advancement of more efficient safety interventions of reducing mishaps.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING PRACTICES AND SUSTAINABLE PERFORMANCE IN MANUFACTURING SECTOR

The implementation of sustainable manufacturing practices has brought many benefits not only to the manufacturing industry itself but also to the environment. Among the benefits are increasing productivity, bringing a good image, and producing environmentally friendly products. However, there are still many manufacturing organizations that still do not implement sustainable manufacturing practices due to factors such as high cost and organizational culture that does not accept such practices. Thus, this study aims to identify the relationship between sustainable manufacturing practices (SMP) and the sustainable performance of manufacturing organizations. Data were collected based on quantitative methods using a questionnaire survey. This study employed a simple random sampling method and SPSS was used to analyze the descriptive and correlation data for a sample of 51 manufacturing companies in Johor. Clean production practices and employee relations show a significant relationship with sustainable performance. Eco-efficiency practices show no relationship to economic sustainability, yet there is a significant relationship to environmental sustainability and social sustainability. The benefit of this study is that manufacturing organizations can see some SMPs acting as drivers to improve the sustainable performance of the organization because of the long-term benefits it offers.

THE EFFECTS OF MARKET ORIENTATION, PRODUCT INNOVATION AND MARKETING ETHICS ON FIRM PERFORMANCE: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In the contemporary business environment, market orientation has become a widely discussed topic in the business community and academics. Since the market environment has become more competitive, developing and improving one's internal resources is now an absolute necessity. Despite the influence these topics have on the performance of microenterprises, a significant number of market orientation studies haven't empirically connected them. According to this perspective, this study established a theoretical link between market orientation and SME performance via a literature review. Additionally, a new framework for experimental evidence was developed. This study makes significant contributions to the understanding of the relationship between market orientation and SME performance but also sheds light on the critical role of product innovation as a mediator. Furthermore, the conceptual model explains the impact of marketing ethics as a moderator on small- and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) performance.

SAGO STARCH COMPRESSING MACHINE: INCREASING THE PRODUCTIVITY WITH NEW CONCEPT

Sago is the staple food of Melanau in Sarawak. Sago is sourced from Pokok Rumbia or known as Pokok Sagu which is widely found in the interior of the forest. Pokok Rumbia is a kind of palm tree found in Malaysia and Indonesia forests. Among the products of sago trees is wet sago starch or ‘Lemantak’. Wet sago starch is still traditionally produced by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). By utilizing the compressed air produced using the single-acting cylinder from a pneumatic system, the sago starch is compressed with 1.5 horsepower. Through careful selections of concepts, the final selected concept was fabricated and analysed. Machine efficiency analysis is determined by taking into account the compressor pressure factor, the time taken for compression, the height of wet sago starch, and the rate of production at a given time. It is proven that with the implementation of the process through the new machine concept, the productivity of ‘Lemantak’ has increased by 68% compared to the conventional method of production.

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS AND SHIFTING OF GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS

Industrial revolutions marked rapid structural transformation in the manufacturing sector making changes to production processors and products while reshaping the lifestyle across the world. Industrial revolutions redefined the product identity of every individual economy with the changes of specializations acquired through different manufacturing sectors. Similarly, new sets of countries emerged as industrial input providers as well as output buyers. At the same time, the world specialization in the manufacturing sector diversified along with the expansion of global value chains. As a result, the final product is assembled in one location while a multitude of components is produced globally by different countries. The intention of the article is to examine the shift of global competitiveness throughout the last two decades with the emergence of the Fourth Industrial Revolutionary implications especially among Developed Economies and Newly Industrial Economies. The international competitiveness of a country is mainly decided by the relative cost of production. The relative cost is again decided by the productivity, availability of quality resources including labor, cost of doing business, favourable macroeconomic factors, and institutional factors. The main objective of this study is to focus the attention on the reshaping of the global competitiveness map along the timeline as a result of technological spikes known as industrial revolutions paying special attention to the fourth industrial revolution. The secondary sources are tapped for the necessary information and mixed-method is applied to analyze the gathered data. The implications of the fourth industrial revolution show the reshaping of the global competitiveness landscape faster than the previous industrial revolutions. Countries with more commercialized innovations, intellectual property rights, and adopting key technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics, the internet of things, cloud computing, 3D printing, and simulations in production are at the forefront of the competitiveness in the manufacturing sector.

ENHANCING VITAMIN C CONTENT IN SOAP PRODUCTION VIA SUBSEQUENT AMOUNT OF EXTRACT FROM PHYLLANTHUS AMBLICA AND COSNICIUM BLUEMEANUM

The demand for cosmetic products is rapidly growing, despite the majority of them is high in chemical substances and may harm the skin. Nowadays, there are other alternatives that may help to prevent the use of chemical substances in cosmetic products. For example, fruit contains its own nutrient. Furthermore, there are some fruits that contains high in vitamins and also good for the skin. Researchers noticed that Phyllantus amblica (Melaka fruits) has an unpleasant odor but it higher with contains 30 times more vitamin C compared to orange while Cosnicium blumeanem (mengkunyit) helps raise the level of vitamins C in the body. Therefore, looking at potential and benefits, research has been conducted to produce a bar soap (Amblica Soap) from Phyllantus amblica and Cosnicium blumeanem. Analyze has been done to determine the vitamin C, antioxidant level, and perception level of respondents towards Amblica Soap. Likert Scale and High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) was used as the quantitative instrument. A number of 30 respondents were selected based on their locality. Descriptive analysis was used to analyses collected using SPSS version 25.0. Resulting confirming that is Amblica Soap not contain in vitamin C and shows the perception level of respondents towards Amblica Soap is highly positive. In conclusion, Amblica Soap accepted optimistically.

HETEROGENEOUS EFFECT OF SECTORAL COMPOSITION ON THE GREEN TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS IN ASIA’S MIDDLE-INCOME COUNTRIES

This study examines the extent to which sectoral composition can affect green technology innovations in 20 selected Asia’s Middle-Income countries from 1995 until 2016. To measure the cross-sectional dependence among cross-sectional units and allows heterogeneous coefficients in a panel, this study will adopt the Dynamic Common Correlated Effect (DCCE). The results show that an increase in the proportion of industry and services sectors plays an important role in innovations of environmentally friendly technology. It is also knowing that the tourism sector and pollution level would be a prospect for green technology innovations. On the contrary, the increasing proportion of the agriculture sector may hinder green innovations. The finding of this study can be helpful for policymakers in middle-Income countries to promote a balance of green technology development in each sector for the sake of comprehensive sustainable development.