In Malaysia, manufacturing industry is a major contributor to the economic advancement. As a result, cutting-edge technology like the internet of things (IoT) is projected to have a significant impact on business operations and supply chain management (SCM). However, research into the influence of IoT deployment on supply chains and organizational performance is relatively sparse. Therefore, this study is to determine the relationship between benefits and challenges of IoT adoption and organizational performance. Furthermore, this study looks into the mediating role of supply chain performance in the relationship between IoT adoption benefits and challenges and organizational performance. The population of this study is comprised of 3019 manufacturing companies in Malaysia, while the minimum sample size needed is 43 manufacturing companies.1160 complete set of survey questionnaire were distributed through email and 63 responses received representing five per cent of response rate. Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) is used to assess all of the study's hypotheses. The results of this paper support six out of the seven hypotheses tested. In conclusion, the manufacturing industry in Malaysia needs to be exposed more to the benefits of IoT rather than keep discussing its challenges. This study can be a guideline to the manufacturing companies in decision making for IoT adoption. The limitations and recommendation for future study is highlighted.

The COVID-19 outbreak is a black swan event that has uncovered the delicateness of global supply chains and business architecture. Underpinned by the agency theory and institutional theory, a proposition for business continuity in the highly regulated pharma industry is presented in this paper. A cross-sectional quantitative study was carried out on a sample of 102 pharma supply chain executives in Malaysia. The primary data were gathered by administering a self-administered questionnaire and analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The result reveals that supply chain orientation directly influences supply chain resilience. Also, introducing collaborative regulation as a mediator in this relationship shows partial mediation. The notion of collaborative regulation as a behavioral governance mechanism is relatively new, thus, presenting interesting opportunities for further exploration of the subject matter.

The development of Islamic tourism such as Umrah does not get much attention in the literature though there are 6 million people all around the world performing Umrah every year. Nowadays, social media has been recognized as an important tool in building and maintaining the image of tourist destination especially in the Umrah context. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of social media experiences (interactions and sharing of contents) on attitudes and behavioral intentions towards Umrah package (booking decisions and electronic Word of Mouth) among generation X and Y. Sums of three hundred eighty-four respondents were engaged as the respondents. The population of this study was among Malaysian Muslim citizens who had social media experiences in seeking online information and knowledge about Umrah and already performed Umrah. The data then was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) and Partial Least Squares (PLS) software. The findings of this study confirmed that sharing of contents of social media experiences has significant and positive relationship on behavioral intentions (booking decisions and electronic Word of Mouth).

Most counterfeit studies engage consumers’ intention to purchase without considering their past experiences. Understanding consumers who have experienced in counterfeit product situations and how this has influenced their actual perceptions, attitudes and behavior on this is-sue is important to understand. Therefore, this study aims to understand the repurchase behavior of experienced consumers in regards to counterfeit products and their demographics, past purchases, materialism, economic and social factors. In addition, this study also investigates the mediating effect of attitude on the relationship between the factors and the repur-chase behavior. The participants are among 200 working adults who have purchased counterfeit products in a six-month period. Multiple regression analysis indicates that gender (female), past purchasing behavior, materialism and social factors had positive relationships with repurchase behavior. Remarkably, the economic factor is found to be significant. However, it has a negative relationship with repurchase behavior indicating that experienced consumers in counterfeit products purchase fake goods to minimize the economic effect. Hierarchical regression analysis indicates the mediating effect of attitude on the relationship between past purchase and materialism on repurchase behavior. The outcome of this study can also be used as a reference and knowledge base for scholars and marketers in understanding the attitude of consumers and their repurchase intention of counterfeit products.

Large-scale wind turbines mostly use Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) as the transmission system, which is highly efficient. However, it comes with high complexity and cost too. In contrast, the small-scale wind turbines that are available in the market offer a one-speed gearing system only where no gear ratios are varied, resulting in low efficiency of harvesting energy and leading to gears failure. In this research, an unsupervised machine-learning algorithm is proposed to address the energy efficiency of the automatic transmission system in vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT), to increase its efficiency in harvesting energy. The aim is to find the best adjustment for VAWT while the automatic transmission system is taken into account. For this purpose, the system is simulated and tested under various gear ratios conditions while a centrifugal clutch is applied to automatic gear shifting. The outcomes indicated that the automatic transmission system could successfully adjust the spinning in line with the wind speed. As a result, the obtained level of harvested voltage and power by VAWT with the automatic transmission system are improved significantly. Consequently, it is concluded that automatic VAWTs, equipped with the machine-learning capability can readjust themselves with the wind speed more efficiently.

The Flexible flow shop (FFS) is defined as a multi-stage flow shops with multiple parallel machines. FFS scheduling problem is a complex combinatorial problem which has been intensively studied in many real world industries. This review paper gives a comprehensive exploration review on the FFS scheduling problem and guides the reader by considering and understanding different environmental assumptions, system constraints and objective functions for future research works. The published papers are classified into two categories. First is the FFS system characteristics and constraints including the problem differences and limitation defined by different studies. Second, the scheduling performances evaluation are elaborated and categorized into time, job and multi related objectives. In addition, the resolution approaches that have been used to solve FFS scheduling problems are discussed. This paper gives a comprehensive guide for the reader with respect to future research work on the FFS scheduling problem.

The features of a holistic view in an organization create the data value of the Business Intelligence (BI) and Knowledge Management (KM) in viewing the big picture of organizational performance diagnostics framework. This research focuses on the specific features of railway supply chain performance in viewing the decision-making process and creating better knowledge formation. The intention of the study is to structure supplier performance using BI-KM framework development to determine holistic perspective factors. The outcomes indicate that BI and KM significantly increased the railway supply chain and significantly increased the information system. This BI-KM framework relates the current analytic characteristics in designing the railway supply chain towards information system in determining the strategic theme of the decision-making process of the decision support system together with system features, characteristics of data, the content of the themes, and the effect of the decision-making process and for executive strategic performance diagnostics tool that provides effective strategic decision making in supply chain performance. The quantitative research method uses SmartPLS software version 3.2.8 for empirical analysis through distributing survey questionnaires to 320 railway suppliers in Malaysia. Using a model-driven development framework, to measure the implementation success of the decision support system, the study is conducted in the railway supplier focusing on strategic management that helps to make the decision and facilitate the organizational success.

Designing a production process normally is involved with some important constraints such as uncertainty, trade-off between production costs and quality, customer’s expectations and production tolerances. In this paper, a novel multi-objective robust optimization model is introduced to investigate the best levels of design variables. The primary objective is to minimize the production cost while increasing robustness and performance. The response surface methodology is utilized as a common approximation model to fit the relationship between responses and design variables in the worst-case scenario of uncertainties. The target mean ratio α is applied to ensure the quality of the process by providing the robustness for all types of quality characteristics and with a trade-off between variability and deviance from the ideal point. The Lp metric method is used to integrate all objectives in one overall function. In order to estimate target value of the quality loss by considering production tolerances, the process capability ratio (Cpm) is applied. At the end, a numerical chemical mixture problem is served to show the applicability of the proposed method.

In recent years, the issue of food packaging waste has become a vital environmental concern in the society which revolves around waste management practices particularly among food hawkers. The problem has been highlighted by many researchers and numerous suggestions have been made in order to improve sustainability with regard to green environment. Food packaging waste ranks the highest contributor to waste. Thus, environmentally friendly food packaging (EFFP) has been introduced in the market to ensure good management practices could be promoted among food hawkers so that environmental pollution can be reduced. However, even though many environmental programs have been implemented, the usage of EFFP among food hawkers has not improved. Hence, this paper aims to propose a specific actual behavior model to determine the usage of EFFP among food hawkers with personal value as a mediator. The development of the model used data that were collected from local food hawkers. Structural equation modeling was used to test related hypotheses. The findings indicated that personal values were a suitable mediator construct. Furthermore, attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral were all found to have had significant effects on the in-tention to use and the actual behavior. Finally, this paper also discusses the limitations of the present study and the contribution it has made.

In recent years, the Malaysian Ministry of Tourism has been increasingly investing for the development of homestay destinations, which have a deeply positive and sustainable socio-economic impact on rural communities. Tourists who visit these less-trodden areas of the country in turn have an opportunity to experience its diverse cultural heritage in a more inti-mate and personable way. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that contribute to tourists’ satisfaction with the service they received at Homestay Banghuris in Sepang, Selangor, Malaysia. A total of 80 tourists willingly participated in a research questionnaire distributed at the homestay. They were selected by the simple random sampling method. The study examined the relationship between service quality and tourist satisfaction and realize that there were positive and meaningful relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction.