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Microfinance is the provision of microcredit, savings, and other financial services to the poor who cannot obtain credit from commercial banks due to a lack of collateral or other factors. The funds can be used to fund commercial activities like asset acquisition and business development. Borrowers who do not have access to traditional financial institutions can obtain a loan through microfinance. Loan defaults are caused by a variety of factors, including high interest rates, insufficient loan size, poor appraisal, a lack of monitoring, and incorrect client selection. This paper would like to confirm the importance of training in preventing repayment default. The study's primary goal was to see if education has a significant impact on borrowers' ability to repay their loans. As a strategy, a number of related articles are being sought on the website by using the term "training." According to the findings, proper training may aid in better repayment performance. As a result, we conclude that borrowers should be provided with training as a support tool to increase loan repayment. When disbursing funds, microfinance organisations should include training as one of the tasks for entrepreneurs to complete.

This research is about assignment problem; which revolves around the multiple challenges faced by the administration in assigning students their focus disciplines. The objective of this research is to find the optimum solution in assigning students their focus discipline course using a mathematical model. This is also to validate whether students get the right choice of the focus discipline course that they have chosen. Hence, in this research, a mathematical model is presented to help the administrators with the assignment process. The goal of the model is to ensure equality among students, while at the same time trying to guarantee the STML students’ wishes for their focus disciplines to take every semester is fulfilled. By using a mathematical programming called AMPL (A Mathematical Programming Language) software, it can solve and produce accurate result in the assignment problem. As a result, the administrator can easily assign the students the focus discipline of their choice, whether the first, second, third choice or so on.

This research aims to optimize the assignment of students to minor program at Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM). The goal of this research is to help the administrator in the assignment process. This research was held among the STML students in UUM and questionnaires were given to 50 random students in STML. An AMPL (A Mathematical Programming Language) software was used to solve the assigning the students to the minoring program. The result shows that all students will be assigned by one minor according to their preferred preferences.

This research is about students enrolled to the residential halls at University Utara Malaysia (UUM). Each of the students are assigned to each residential hall by Students Accommodation Centre (SAC). In this study, we are focusing on 15 residential halls that UUM provided to all students. This research using quantitative methods for collecting of information through the questionnaires to choose which residential hall that students preferred to stay at UUM. This study involved 50 UUM students as the respondents. By applying mathematical programming, we are helping the administrators with the assignment process. As a result, we have established the accurate decision by using A Mathematical Programming Language (AMPL) software. The simple AMPL programming was used to solve the practical application by using some mathematical model to find an optimum solution. Moreover, this research aims to complete the residential hall placement of the students by the assignment problem by using mathematical programming method. The findings of the study will be used to increase knowledge on the issue of the appropriate residential hall placement for students.

In this research, a mathematical model programming using an AMPL (A Mathematical Programming Language) software is presented to help the administrators with the assigning process. The goal of the optimization model is to ensure equality among students while at the same time trying to grant their wishes to do their internship at companies they preferred. An unfair division of companies can cause frustration among students. Therefore, it is important that the preferences of the students are met in the best way possible. The results show that mathematical programming model can be used to assign students to companies for internship based on their preferences.

Vendor managed inventory (VMI) is an illustration of effective partnering and collaboration practices between upstream and downstream points in a supply chain. VMI policy is an integrating decision between a supplier and the customers in which the supplier takes the accountability of sustaining the customers’ inventory while confirming that no stock-out. The supplier indicates when each delivery time takes place, so that the customers are no longer responses to the customers' orders. Under the VMI system, the planning is proactive as it is based on the available information rather than reactive to customers' orders. Consequently, in this paper, we expected that the demand at the construction sites are constant and stationary, and the construction consolidation centre (CCC) is implementing a VMI system. The concentration of this paper is to minimize the transportation and inventory holding costs of the customers for a two-stage supply chain system in the construction industry. The problem is to identify what is the delivery quantities to the construction sites, what is delivery times and which routes should be used to deliver products to the customers at the construction site for the single-period deterministic inventory routing problem (SP-DIRP) in the construction sector. Furthermore, realistic side-constraints such as driving time restrictions, storage capacities constraints and constant replacement intervals are considered. Results of a simplified real-life case implementing the proposed linear mixed-integer program are shown and discussed in detail.

This article is a review of definitions and terminologies used in existing literatures related to application of Lean System in manufacturing environment. The article is made to provide clear insight and comparisons on various terms used in contemporary academic journals, books and published theses on the subject of Lean System. This review realizes that the term Lean Manufacturing was more popular among Malaysian and Asian countries, while Lean Production was mostly used by American scholars. From this review, readers also might learn that Lean System and Toyota Production System are not really the same system due to a missing principle. The present review is concluded with visual explanation regarding several major jargons in Lean System.

This article seeks to provide research opportunities in supply chain networks. For manufacturing industries, materials supply is an essential input to the production process for a sustainability value creation for firms and stakeholders. However, due to several reasons have caused issues to material short supplies in the production process that caused additional cost leading to a negative impact to firm operating performance. The purpose of this study to address the current phenomena of materials stoppage or short supply that affects the production process ultimately creating a possible loss to firm from the delayed time in the production process and supply of finished goods to customers. This has been ongoing crisis felt by manufacturers that require immediate attention particularly by those charged of organizational governance from operational to strategic level management of firm operation along the line of supply chain process. This article mainly to focus on the factors contributing to materials shortages or short supply in the production process in manufacturing industries. This material/inventory problem has not been discussed and lack of investigation done so far, well this article will bring out the important issues related to materials shortage that require further attention especially academician, researchers and managers. Therefore, the operation challenging issues pertaining to parts/ material shortage should be known through this paper. Further, the contribution outcome of this paper, addresses the critical issues related to production line stoppage that mainly caused by materials shortages based on the author’s more than twenty years working experience dealing with materials shortages issues in the electronic & electrical base manufacturing. This article will be practical guide to those manufacturing industries facing poor supply of parts issues that add additional costs to firms which influence the operating profit/ performance. This article seeks to

Halal tourism is customized towards Muslim tourists based on the Islamic principles known as Maqasid Al-Sharia. Accommodation sector in the halal tourism is also guided by these principles. Despite the increasing demand for the halal-based hotel, there is no established and comprehensive guidelines for its operations. Through a qualitative study, this study provides a guideline named Sharia Islamic Hotel Assessment Tool (SIHAT) which covers a wide range of operational practices of a hotel. The 64-item of SIHAT covers the main operations of hotels namely administration, common areas, bedroom, services and food and beverages. The guideline is hoped to help the halal-based hoteliers to operate according to the Islamic principles as well as for their continuous improvement initiatives.

Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) is well-known as the second generation of multivariate statistical analysis to correlate the relationship between multiple variables namely the latent construct. Lately, the popularity using PLS-SEM is growing within the Variance-Based (VB) SEM community. There is still a great number of researcher finding VB-SEM results reporting a daunting task. Ultimately, an advanced PLS-SEM analysis utilizing product innovation performance example with SmartPLS 3.2.6 tool. Higher order construct or hierarchical component modelling is seen as an advanced tool towards the parsimony of the research variables conceptualization.

The implementation of the Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) in the Malaysian manufacturing sector can be viewed as a solution to mitigate the increment of operational costs and low performance in customer services. Many factors contributed to the performance of the VMI programme, but only a few attempts was made to determine the contribution of the VMI elements on VMI performance. The objectives of this study were to investigate the level of VMI practices, organizational factors and VMI performance; and to examine the influence of type of product on VMI element and VMI performance. The study used qualitative approach, which data were gathered from semi-structured questions through interview process. There are 4 manufacturing companies listed in the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers were selected for data collection purpose. The findings showed that high information sharing, moderate level of inventory control, close inventory location to customer premises,inventory ownership, mutual decision on inventory replenishment are among VMI practices in manufacturing companies. The respondents also confirmed that the influence of type of product characteristic onto VMI performance only to a limited extent. As a recommendation, supplier and customer must design their VMI program, which suit to product characteristics. Another important part is VMI agreement should be balanced between the need of supplier’s authority in controlling customer’s inventory and current capability of supplier. They should consider the flexibility of VMI system, especially the capability to reduce cost on behalf of the supplier and to provide better service to the customer.

The aim of this conceptual paper is to examine the inventory performance focusing on days of supply. Problem focal towards the context of inventory performance further narrow down to the capability of the relevant corporate governance mechanisms in managing inventory. Basically as far as concern to corporate governance study mainly focus on financial aspects and this research explore from the angle of non-financial aspects of the inventory control that’s contribute toward 60 to 70% of total manufacturing cost. Two main corporate governance variables were discussed in terms of their relative impact on inventory performance that’s include CEO duality, and managerial ownership. As for inventory performance measured by the inventory perspective that’s include days of supply and inventory value

A worldwide market inventory is one of the biggest and most significant resources of a manufacturing industry. ABC analysis is one of the techniques used comprehensively in manufacturing industries for inventory classification.The ABC inventory classification technique has an efficient control on a huge amount of inventory items. The ABC inventory classification approach categorizes inventory items as A, B and C classes according to their annual consumption value.To direct and control the inventory items more proficiently the inventory managers regularly classify and group all the inventory items.Thus, in this paper, we concentrate on inventory management in a healthcare product manufacturing company in Kedah, Malaysia.A case study approach is used to make a preliminary inventory assessment through ABC analysis in order to control the inventory items more efficiently.

Previous researches have validated that students’ intention to continue use MOOCs was mainly determined by Usefulness and Enjoyment.This paper takes a different approach from previous studies and postulates that relationship between Usefulness and Enjoyment on MOOCs Continuance Intention are moderated by Internet Self-efficacy. Partial Least Square Path Modelling (PLS-PM) approach has been employed to analyse the data collected.Using online survey data from 251 students registered with Malaysia MOOCs program, the results revealed that Internet Self-efficacy moderates the relationship between Enjoyment and MOOCs Continuance Intention.However, the moderating effect of Internet Self-efficacy showed insignificant result on the path between Usefulness and MOOCs Continuance Intention.

Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) is well-known as the second generation of multivariate statistical analysis to correlate the relationship between multiple variables namely the latent construct. Lately, the popularity using PLS-SEM is growing within the Variance-Based (VB) SEM community.There is still a great number of researcher finding VB-SEM results reporting a daunting task. Ultimately, an advanced PLS-SEM analysis utilizing product innovation performance example with SmartPLS 3.2.6 tool.Higher order construct or hierarchical component modelling is seen as an advanced tool towards the parsimony of the research variables conceptualization.

Lack of trust among partners can lead to failure of VMI program. Since, many study emphasized that trust has significant roles in VMI program, companies that involved in VMI program must well understood the role trust on their performance. However, there is still lack of study on to what extend trust can influence VMI performance. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine the impact of trust towards VMI performance. Questionnaire was the main instrument for the study, and it was gathered from 101 of suppliers in manufacturing companies. The findings show that trust contributes to service and cost performance of VMI program. Although, literature suggest that trust has significant impact on both cost reduction and service improvement in VMI program, this study shows that there is a limited effect on cost and service performance. This study recommends that trust should be enhanced through the sharing of demand information in order to increase benefits of VMI program.

This study about fundamental students enrolled at University Utara Malaysia (UUM).Foundation students are offered a variety of courses by the university. In this study we look based on 16 courses that College of Business (COB) offer. This research using quantitative methods for collecting information through the distribution of questionnaires to from fundamental students at UUM. This study involved 16 fundamental students at UUM at COB, selected as respondents.We have the accurate decision by using second quantitative method that called as AMPL.The programming of simple practical mathematical programming by using some algorithm in computer and printing for optimum solutions.This study aims to complete the placement of university students as an assignment problem by using mathematical programming method to solve the problem.The findings of the study will be used to increase knowledge on the issue of the appropriate placement courses for students and guidance to the university.

Vendor managed inventory (VMI) is a management policy in which the supplier implements the responsibility of maintaining the inventory at the retailers to confirm that they will not run out of stock. Under the VMI policy, the supplier takes responsibility for managing the retailers. Moreover, delivery times to the retailers are no longer set by responding to retailers' orders, instead the supplier establishes when each delivery takes place. Therefore, this study reviewed the main publications on single item (vehicle) related to deterministic inventory routing problem (DIRP). Under this approach, the order delivery is in congruence with deterministic demand rates. The objective of DIRP is to resolve a flow strategy that can minimise operational and inventory holding costs without having a stock-out according to a retailer planned schedule.In this study, the focus in on the single-warehouse, multipleretailer vendor managed inventory (SWMR-VMI), where all retailers face a deterministic and constant demand rate.

This paper considers the problem of managing inventory and routing problems in a two-stage supply chain system under a Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) policy. VMI policy is an integrating decisions between a supplier and the customers. Thus, we assumed that the demand at each customer is stationary and the warehouse is implementing a VMI. The focus of this research is to optimize the inventory and the transportation costs of the customers for a twostage supply chain system. The problem is to define the delivery quantities, delivery times and routes to the customers for the single-period deterministic inventory routing problem (SP-DIRP) system. As a result, a linear mixedinteger program is established for the solutions of the SP-DIRP problem. A detailed analysis of an illustrative example for solving the SP-DIRP problem is presented to describe the integration of the proposed model.

The association between the corporate governance and the inventory performance been discussed in this paper.Corporate governance mechanisms include board size and managerial ownership with the inventory performance that include days of supply.Best practices in corporate world are being the utmost distinct and important for stakeholders and shareholders to safeguard the interest of the firm. In such case the value of the company refer to how well and effective to manage inventory involving agent and principal means manager and the shareholder. Therefore, this paper tries to address the relevancy and appropriateness to manage inventory value to certain extend

Penawar Industries Sdn Bhd (Penawar), founded by Haji Shuib Mohd Isa (Hj Shuib) in Kedah as an SME, had been manufacturing the healthcare and cosmetic products under the brand name of ROJAM since 1992. During the past several years, Penawar had been struggling in sustaining the market share.The annual sales have started to drop significantly since 2001.On top of that, in 2008, the marketing manager who was very productive left the company due to family reason.Hj Shuib failed to find a new marketing manager who could replace the previous one with enough skills and high productivity.This added further headache to Hj Shuib.The company’s sales dropped to more than 80% in 2010 as compared with the peak year in 1998.The business result was getting bad and bad in a year by year which became worse in 2015. Hj Shuib finally took some crucial actions for sustainability of the company he founded.One of such key actions was to assign Hajah Rodina Shuib, the finance director and one of his daughters, for taking the responsibility of the factory effective from June 2015.

This paper contribute towards factors of delay as a whole in Malaysian construction sector by application of Industrialized Building System (IBS).Similarly to other developed countries, Malaysia getting benefits through returns from construction industry, as identified through Gross Domestic Product (GDP).However, there are still some issues in the IBS construction industry to overcome until the time and cost performance plunged to reduce.The focus of this study is to inquire factors in delay issue which involves series of people which act as project stakeholders particularly in Malaysian Industrialized Building System.A number of factors causing delay to construction project in IBS are found by previous study.The prominent factors of delay in IBS are poor expertise to engage with unpleasant situation during handling IBS project, lack of communication between stakeholders, ineffective team alliance, poor client behavior, poor financial management and external factor.Study regarding delay issue with IBS adoption in foreign countries such as United States and China was progressively conducted.In Malaysia, a survey towards establishment and development of IBS has been conducted.It can be concluded that IBS project faces numerous challenges to be implement resulting in the delay.However, very few studies have been attempted on the factors causing time delay.Therefore, this paper will focus on factor which contribute into delay in Malaysian IBS project.

In a two-stage supply chain system, vendor managed inventory policies (VMI) is an integrating decisions between a supplier and his customers.The supplier assumes the responsibility of maintaining inventory at its customers and ensuring that they will not run out of stock at any moment.The objective of this paper is to optimize the inventory and the transportation costs of the customers for a two-stage supply chain. The problem is to determine the delivery quantities as well as the times and routes to the customers, while ensuring feasibility regardless of the realized demands.This paper considers the single-period stochastic inventory routing problem (SP-SIRP) system. The problem formulated as a linear mixed-integer stochastic program for the solutions of the SP-SIRP problem. An illustrative example for the SP-SIRP is presented to explain the proposed model. The finding shows that the vehicle capacity is optimized efficiently with the average capacity utilization for all tours is 100%.

This paper discusses the problem of efficiently managing inventory and routing problems in a two-level supply chain system.Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) policy is an integrating decisions between a supplier and his customers.We assumed that the demand at each customer is stationary and the warehouse is implementing a VMI.The objective of this paper is to minimize the inventory and the transportation costs of the customers for a two-level supply chain.The problem is to determine the delivery quantities, delivery times and routes to the customers for the single-period deterministic inventory routing problem (SP-DIRP) system. As a result, a linear mixed-integer program is developed for the solutions of the SP-DIRP problem.

Sewage system which is considered as a way of managing and transporting wastewater from its unhealthy and unhygienic state, treated and recycled to be used for the daily water source activities.It has always been considered that sewer pipe blockage, being a serious problem when it comes to sewage system therefore creating series of backdrop in the form of mosquitoes breeding which causes various diseases, unhealthy environment, and issues of backups in domestic, commercial and industrial buildings.Looking at the rise in population growth, it will prove more hectic and problematic if the sewer pipe blockages are not fully prioritized thereby finding proper ways of mitigating this unwanted catastrophe. In response to this situation, a new concept for mitigating, monitoring and observing the condition within and outside the sewer pipe is being introduced to systematically reduce the problem to a zero minimal tendencies of obstacles that can create a blockage or crack in sewer pipes.A lot of researches have made impacts in mitigating and locating these problems, but this research will be mainly focused on achieving a minimal to zero blockages. Within this context of study, the research is aimed at actualizing the systematic way at which sewer pipe blockage can be avoided or monitored by the use of an effective and efficient wastewater pre-filtering mechanism which the model will be tested to separate wastewater debris and at the same time reduce the FOG (Fat, Oil and Grease) sediments that can cause clogging and then blockage on the long run. The model will function in a way as to automatically deviate or move the waste water debris to a depositing space while the waste water liquid substance is transported via sewer pipe to the central waste water treatment zone integrating geographic information system (GIS) which is the use of spatial analysis in tracking and locating any form of roots or tree growth along the sewer pipe therefore minimizing the issues of cracks due

Most of the construction stakeholders around the world especially in developing countries are not really aware of the Resource Recovery approaches in contemporary construction projects.Previous studies reported that Resource Recovery issues received less attention from the construction industry stakeholders compared to construction costs and time related issues. However, this trend has changed due to the depletion of non-renewable resources, greenhouse gas emissions and global warming with much effort now being directed to ‘build greener’ construction projects through proper application of the Resource Recovery approach.This study examined current application of Resource Recovery approach among Malaysia’s construction stakeholders.Primary data were gathered from 122 questionnaires returned by Malaysian construction stakeholders that included consultants, contractors and clients.The analysis revealed that the adoption of Resource Recovery was only mildly practiced by the Malaysian construction stakeholders.

This paper considers a two-stage supply chain, consisting of a single warehouse and multiple retailers facing deterministic demands, under a vendor-managed inventory (VMI) policy.It presents a two-phase optimisation approach for coordinating the shipments in this VMI system.The first phase uses direct shipping from the supplier to all retailers to minimise the overall inventory costs.Then, in the second phase, the retailers are clustered using a construction heuristic in order to optimise the transportation costs while satisfying some additional restrictions.The improvement of the system's performance through coordinated VMI replenishments against the system with direct shipping only is shown and discussed in the comparative analysis section.

In a two-stage supply chain system, vendor managed inventory (VMI) policies is an integrating decisions between a supplier and his retailers.The supplier assumes the responsibility of maintaining inventory at its retailers and ensuring that they will not run out of stock at any moment.This paper discusses an optimization approach, considering the model of static demand on the inbound as well as the outbound inventory for a two-stage supply chain implementing VMI. In the proposed solutions for coordinating the single warehouse multiple-retailers (SWMR) system, retailers are first clustered to minimize the within-cluster travel costs and distances and are then replenished using an optimal direct shipping strategy satisfying some additional restrictions

This research is about assignment problems consist to determine one of the special cases of transportation problems.The assignment problem is a of combinatorial optimization problems in the branch of optimization of or operation research in the mathematics.This research is trying to dig a lot of information by looking at the statistics of the management department with problems whose structure are identical with assignment problems in manufacturing company, which for separate jobs and the cost of assign each job to each person. This study comes out with two elements as an objective which is to minimize total cost of assignment problem in manufacturing company and to maximize the profit in manufacturing company.This study will conduct visit to a manufacturing company and the data will be collected from all employees in departments such as quality department, operation department, human resources department, marketing department and others.This study using quantitative methodology and the data will be analysed using the AMPL model to solve the assignment problem in the manufacturing company.The findings of this research are showing the vehicle assignment problem and the computational procedure, which lead to an optimal solution of the problem. It can reduce the total cost and increases the quality performance the workers.

This study is about the problem of combining the functions of production and transport to a manufacturing company producing a wide range of specialty products for instruct environments by conducting the type of delivery in business. Transportation issues including how production in conditions, where there are several locations and also provides supplies to some destinations by ensuring that the amount of transportation costs can be reduced.The aim of solving transportation problems is to reduce the cost of shipping goods from one location to another to be delivered within a stated time in accordance with the requirements of each region and each delivery location and also ensure that it operates according to its ability.This research explores to see the problems and how to solve the transportation problems in manufacturing company.More specifically, there are two objectives of this research, which is to reduce transport costs and to maximize profit-making companies.This study practice qualitative methodology and the data analysed using AMPL model.The findings from this research provide the significant value such as in minimization of total cost and consumption of certain limited resources such as energy. Generally, it can be concluded that problem of transportation in manufacturing company will be optimize in many ways to achieved the purpose of transportation area.

The Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) has long been implemented by many corporations due to its various positive effects it has towards the company’s performance.At the same time, a number of success stories of VMI program have also been discussed by numerous authors.However, until now, there is no concrete conclusion on VMI has been clarified. Therefore, this study tries to shed the lights on the effects of inventory management practices, which include visibility of demand, replenishment decision, inventory ownership, inventory location, and inventory control limits on VMI performance.Quantitative methodology was chosen as the method to gather the data where those manufacturing companies being selected according to the list from the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturer (FMM).The data was gathered from 101 manufacturing companies whose manufacturing based located in Malaysia. Data analysis was conducted by employing descriptive analysis, factor analysis, reliability analysis, and a simple multiple regressions.The findings showed that visibility of demand and inventory control limits were the main predictor of service performance. Meanwhile, only inventory location contributes to cost performance of VMI. Manufacturing companies should urge their customer to share demand information and setting appropriate min–max limits of inventory levels in order to get benefits from VMI program.It was suggested for companies to consider to setup inventory storage or warehouse near to their customer’s premises especially when engaging with abroad customers.

Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) is an effective policy of integration between the different stages in a supply chain system.In VMI, the supplier takes the responsibility of maintaining inventory at its retailers and ensuring that they will not run out of stock at any moment.The aim of this paper is to optimize the inventory holding costs and the transportation costs of the retailers within the same set partition and/or combining the retailers in the different set partitions, for a two-stage supply chain.The problem is to determine the delivery quantities as well as the times and routes to the retailers, while ensuring feasibility regardless of the realized demands, and minimizing the total cost composed of distribution and inventory holding costs.In the proposed approach, retailers are first clustered to determine the possible retailers set partitions and are then replenished using an optimal routing strategy satisfying some additional restrictions. The improvement of the system’s performance is shown and discussed in the comparative analysis section.

The primary purpose of this study is to empirically assess the convergent and disriminant validity of lean production constructs.Grounded by the Socio-technical System Theory (STS), this study formulates and examines a conceptual model of lean production practices.The study segregates lean production practices into two main dimensions, namely socially-oriented lean production and technically-oriented lean production.This study utilizes two hundred and five manufacturing companies, selected randomly from the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers Directory.The study measures senior production or lean managers’ view of the lean production practices at their companies.Convergent validity and discriminant validity of the lean practices are assessed.