Zahari Taha

TPM can go beyond maintenance: excerpt from a case implementation

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to present a generic model on using the total productive maintenance (TPM) concept in conjunction with ecology oriented manufacturing (EOM) and 5S focusing on their joint strengths in attaining organizational goals in furtherance to the equipment maintenance objectives.Design/methodology/approach – A systematic implementation‐framework coupled with the standard tools, techniques and practices has been designed. The framework was applied in a large semiconductor manufacturing company.Findings – It is evident that a well drawn TPM implementation plan not only improves equipment efficiency and effectiveness but also brings appreciable improvements in other areas such as reduction of manufacturing cycle time, size of inventory, customer complaints, and creates cohesive small group autonomous teams and increases the skill and confidence of individuals. The resulting system is found to be more productive in terms of both partial and total productivity measures. This is in line...

State of implementation of TPM in SMIs: a survey study in Malaysia

Applications of systems like total quality management (TQM), total productive maintenance (TPM) and just‐in‐time (JIT) have been studied mainly in large industries with little attention being paid to small and medium industries (SMIs) in developing countries. This paper discusses the state of implementation of TPM in SMIs and the effects of lack of productive maintenance. The main hypothesis is to determine if SMIs have understood the importance of a productive maintenance system as a constituent of manufacturing management. A survey methodology has been applied for this test. The outcomes of some case studies are kept in mind. All these show that the implementation of TPM or preventive maintenance in SMIs is still low. Therefore, more effort should be given to developing a better understanding, motivation and participation for implementation of productive maintenance systems. Finally, an implementation methodology is proposed.

The Effect of Job and Environmental Factors on Job Satisfaction in Automotive Industries

A methodology was developed for diagnosing industrial work, which includes questionnaire, observation, measurements, data collection and statistical analysis. A survey was conducted to investigate the relationship between job satisfaction and factors that affect work design in 2 automotives manufacturing companies in Malaysia. A basic work design model was proposed. The aim of this model was to determine the factors that influence employees’ perception towards their work. A set of multiple-choice questionnaires was developed and data was collected by interviewing employees at a production plant. The survey focused on job and environmental factors. The results supported the proposed model and showed that job and environmental factors were significantly related to job satisfaction. They highlighted the significant influence of age, work experience and marital status on job satisfaction. Further, environmental factors, especially the surroundings, context dependence and the building’s function, also had a significant impact on job satisfaction.

The Relation Between Upper Limb Muscle and Brain Activity in Two Precision Levels of Repetitive Light Tasks

A study was conducted to investigate the effects of repetitive light tasks of low and high precision on upper limb muscles and brain activities. Surface electromyography (EMG) and electroencephalography (EEG) were used to measure the muscle and brain activity of 10 subjects. The results show that the root-meansquare (RMS) and mean power frquency (MPF) of the muscle activity and the mean power of the EEG alpha bands were higher on the high-precision task than on the low-precision one. There was also a high and significant correlation between upper limb muscle and brain activity during the tasks. The longer the time and the more precise the task, the more the subjects become fatigued both physically and mentally. Thus, these results could be potentially useful in managing fatigue, especially fatique related to muscle and mental workload.

Application of Data Acquisition and Telemetry System into a Solar Vehicle

The Center for Product Design and Manufacturing (CPDM) of University Malaya going to take part in the World Solar Challenge (WSC) 2009. It is a biannual solar powered car race over 3021 km from Darwin to Adelaide. The aim of this project is to build a system for monitoring performance of the solar vehicle during testing and race, a data acquisition and telemetry (DaqT) system is needed. In this project, a DaqT system will be developed using National Instruments’ (NI) LabVIEW, compactRIO (cRIO) and MaxStream Xstream Radio Frequency modules. The DaqT is able to measure signals from sensors which are thermocouples, current transducers, battery storage and tachometer. Experiment is conducted to investigate the capability of the DaqT system to process signals from essential sensors, transmit data with wireless communication and data logging. The results of this project from the experiment, the DaqT manage to transmit data in open space up to 700 meters and the percentages of the error is below 5%.

Investigation of upper limb muscle and brain activities on light assembly tasks: A pilot study

A study was conducted to investigate the effect of light assembly task on upper limb muscles (biceps brachii and upper trapezius) and brain activities. The task was conducted in two levels of time pressure (No time-stress and time-stress levels). Each task was done for one hour experiment. Surface electromyography (SEMG) measured upper limb muscle activities from six subjects. The results indicated that the biceps brachii and upper trapezius activities tend to increase as the increase of time. It indicated muscle fatigue. Electroencephalography (EEG) was simultaneously recorded with SEMG to record brain activities from Fz, Pz, O1 and O2 channels. EEG alphas RMS were higher on the task with time-stress than task without time-stress. The significant correlation was found between SEMG RMS and EEG alpha RMS. Thus, there was relation between upper limb muscle and brain activity while doing the light assembly task.

Virtual Collaborative R&D Teams in Malaysia Manufacturing SMEs

This paper presents the results of empirical research conducted during March to September 2009. The study focused on the influence of virtual research and development (R&D) teams within Malaysian manufacturing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The specific objective of the study is better understanding of the application of collaborative technologies in business, to find the effective factors to assist SMEs to remain competitive in the future. The paper stresses to find an answer for a question “Is there any relationship between company size, Internet connection facility and virtuality”. The survey data shows SMEs are now technologically capable of performing the virtual collaborative team, but the infrastructure usage is less. SMEs now have the necessary technology to begin the implementation process of collaboration tools to reduce research and development (R&D) time, costs and increase productivity. So, the manager of R&D should take the potentials of virtual teams into account.

Virtual R&D teams: A potential growth of education-industry collaboration

In this paper, we present our more than two years research experiences on virtual R&D teams in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and draws conclusions, giving special attention to the structure of virtual teams required to support education-industry collaboration. We report the relevant results of an online survey study. The online questionnaire was emailed by using a simple random sampling method to 947 manufacturing SMEs. The findings of this study show that SMEs in Malaysia and Iran are willing to use virtual teams for collaboration and the platform for industry-education collaboration is ready and distance between team members or differences in time zones, are not barriers to industry-education collaborations.

Small-scale helicopter system identification model using recurrent neural networks

Designing a reliable flight control for an autonomous helicopter requires a high performance dynamics model. This paper studies the recurrent neural network nonlinear model identification of a small scale helicopter. We have selected a Nonlinear AutoRegressive with eXogenous Inputs SeriesParallel (NARXSP) network model which identifies the dynamics model of an unmanned aerial helicopter from real flight data. The identification process is conducted by using the well known Levenberg-Marquardt learning algorithm. The obtained dynamics model shows good fitness with the actual data. This accuracy might be used to realize a reliable flight control for an autonomous helicopter.

SMEs and virtual R&D teams: A motive channel for relationship between SMEs

This paper explores potential advantages and barriers of virtual teams toward making an interrelation between small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) with a comprehensive review on different aspects of virtual teams in SMEs based on authentic and reputed publications. The purpose of the state-of-the-art literature review is to provide an overview of what is known about the structure and dynamics of virtual collaboration in SMEs which they are the back bone of the world business. This study seeks to address some of the advantages of virtual R&D team in the existing extensive literature on the increase SMEs interrelations. Besides of identify benefits of virtual R&D team in SMEs, propose the way of further studies and recommend improvements. We argue that the routines used to promote interrelation between SMEs, based on virtual collaboration can sometimes create problems for firms as they ignore new challenges. We elaborate various theories on the virtual R&D team by reviewing the precedent papers.