COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS ON DECISION CRITERIA FOR PORT PERSONNEL USING HYBRID ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS (H-AHP)

The demand for talented labor to serve the maritime logistics, particularly in port operations, is growing as the industry expands globally. This requires professional competency in terms of manpower and skills that must be developed effectively. Furthermore, considering the harm done to the industry from the COVID-19 pandemic, capable professionals in port management are a crucial part to reviving the business and its long-term growth and viability. This study explores the criteria for the needed talent from the perspective of port logistics experts using the following multicriteria decision making (MCDM) approaches: Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Preference Ranking Organization System Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE). The objective of this study is to identify the important criteria for personnel performance evaluation in the port marine logistics industry. In order to determine the performance evaluation framework for personnel performance evaluation, the study uses the AHP method to calculate the weightage of the criteria. The highest weightage is Work Attitude (0.560), followed by Job Performance (0.298) and Work Ability (0.120). Lastly, in order to identify the suitable hybrid MCDM approaches for personnel performance evaluation in the port marine logistics industry, three different MCDM approaches (AHP, TOPSIS and PROMETHEE) were used and the results show that the AHP is the best MCDM method to rank the personnel in the port industry by obtaining the highest Kendall's Tau coefficient of 0.619 © 2022, International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process.All Rights Reserved.

Evaluating the Efficiency and Productivity of Malaysian Logistics Companies Using Epsilon-Based Measure and Malmquist Index during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Purpose: The impact of the Covid-19 outbreak since March 2020 has put Malaysia's logistics sector in a contrasting reality to other sectors, as during the implementation of the movement control order (MCO), this sector was declared as providing essential service and allowed to operate in order to fulfil customers' needs. This study aims to assess the efficiency and productivity of the logistics industry in Malaysia before and during the pandemic so that the performance of this industry can be observed.Design/methodology/approach: This study uses secondary data. Yearly records from the annual reports for the period of 2010-2020 were gathered pertaining to 15 Malaysian logistics companies treated as decision making units (DMUs) in this study. The efficiency and productivity of the Malaysian logistics industry during the Covid-19 pandemic have been assessed by using a hybrid DEA model consisting of a combination of epsilon-based measure (EBM) and Malmquist index.Findings: Findings showed that Lingkaran Trans Kota Holdings Berhad was the most efficient and productive logistics company with an average efficiency score of 1 and 12.7% growth in the average productivity index during the study period. In contrast, MISC Berhad obtained the lowest average efficiency score of 0.285. Nevertheless, the average productivity index for MISC Berhad showed an increase by 25.7%. During the early outbreak of Covid-19, Complete Logistics Services Berhad achieved full efficiency and also attained the highest positive growth of 76.2%. Harbour-Link Group Berhad was the least efficient company, scoring an efficiency score of only 0.254 and a decline in productivity growth by 40.8%.Research limitations/implications: The data used in this study may not be sufficient to represent the performance of the entire logistics industry as the pandemic is still not completely over. More useful insights can be obtained if the data can be extended until 2022 to assess the performance of logistics companies after the outbreak of Covid-19 in Malaysia. Many resources that have not been explored in this study and past research may provide an avenue for further research on the performance measurement of logistics companies, particularly in the Malaysian context.Practical implications: This study's discovery may be used to facilitate the evaluation of resource utilisation and help inefficient logistics companies maximise their efficiency. Also, the findings may be used to help policymakers evaluate the existing policy in order to ensure that logistics companies have sufficient resources to offer reliable and efficient courier services.Originality/value: Although numerous studies have been conducted on the efficiency measurement of logistics companies, so far, scarce research in Malaysia has deployed a quantitative approach to measure the performance of Malaysia's logistics industry, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study fills this gap by assessing the efficiency and productivity of the logistics industry in Malaysia before and during the pandemic of Covid-19.

The Long-Term Aspirations of Rohingya Refugees’ Families in Malaysia

The Rohingya refugees have often viewed Malaysia as open, although Malaysia is a non-signatory of the 1951 Refugees Convention and its 1967 Protocol. Hence, the number of Rohingya refugees in Malaysia had increased to more than 180000 in 2021. A fundamental problem with managing refugees in Malaysia is that there is no real policy in place and thus no real idea of how many, who, and where they are. Every year, less than one percent of the refugees have been successfully sent to a third country worldwide. The current situation has prevented the refugee resettlement matter in Malaysia from being resolved quickly;instead, it takes years and even decades for a small outcome, often without any apparent end. One of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the resettlement releases to third countries worldwide decreased sharply in 2020 due to international travelling had to be stopped. Every year, less than 5 percent of the world's refugees will receive a place in a third country (UNHCR Malaysia, 2021). Therefore, it is essential to understand Rohingya refugees' long-term aspirations to prepare them for the future. The right policy is needed to prepare the refugees to resettle in a third country or eventually return to Myanmar. Therefore, this paper explores the Rohingya refugees' future aspirations and resettlement plans based on qualitative data through semi-structured interviews. This research carried out in-depth qualitative interviews with 10 Rohingya refugees currently living in Malaysia and six Rohingya refugees who have already resettled in a third country and used to stay in Malaysia as their transit country. This research discovered nine livelihood aspirations, three community aspirations, and two-family aspirations shared by the respondents. This study also found that almost all respondents aspire to resettle in a third country in the long run, but the delay in getting resettlement leaves them no choice, but to remain in Malaysia. Hence, this paper concludes that policymakers need to construct settlement programmes to help Rohingya refugees and asylums while they are still in Malaysia and prepare them to settle in the third country eventually. © 2018 Malaysian Consumer and Family.

The Proclivity of Green Communication for Logistics Industry: A Framework

Nowadays communication has become a strong part in transferring information. Wireless devices have thrived in number recently, which connects the world by people and objects. The demand of internet has become the backbone of our communication network recently. The energy consumption increasing drastically due to the current situation caused by pandemic COVID-19 disease which forced the economic activities to use online medium as the main platform in doing business. The extensive usage of online data for communication has contributed to the massive increasing number of high energy consumption. It has been identified that green communication is one of the alternative approaches in reduction of energy consumption. However, there exists a gap on the application of green communication in logistics industry which is to say that little research has addressed the implementation of green communication in logistics industry. The importance of having sustainable energy sources has led towards good implementation of different techniques and methods in reducing energy consumption. As logistics industry has become the backbone of our economic activity, it is important to have a good energy saving strategy in implementing a sustainable practice. This paper highlights a review of ‘Green Communication’ (GC) application especially in the usage of communication technology as the medium, with its main objectives in the implementation of good practices towards clean energy approach. This study has gone through a systematic review focusing only on ‘Green Communication’ in order to examine the current research findings regarding GC. The findings are particularly relevant for logistics industry especially for those that involve in irresistible communication networks while preparing and implementing a good and sustainable practices. To further enhance the energy efficiency for GC networks in logistics, an integrated data-driven framework is developed and exemplarily applied on logistics industry in Malaysia. This paper proposes a framework to introduce lists of factors that contributes towards GC in logistics industry. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The Resilience of SMEs in Fighting COVID-19 through Online Business Acceleration

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the social and economic well-being of the world. From an economic perspective, nations around the world have been negatively impacted by the pandemic, including Malaysia. Billions of Ringgit Malaysia have been lost, and businesses, especially SMEs, have suffered tremendously. However, the number of online businesses has increased due to the pandemic response that forced people to stay home. Thus, this paper studies the online business phenomenon among SMEs in Malaysia. The study employs a quantitative survey among online business entrepreneurs in Malaysia. Based on the findings, it reveals that of the SMEs in Malaysia that ventured into online business, most were motivated by the pandemic as they saw it as a business opportunity. Surprisingly, the majority of them agreed that the pandemic positively impacted their business and their sustainability. © 2022 by the authors.

Modelling Workforce For Transportation Sector In Malaysia (Considering Covid-19 Pandemic)

The Covid-19 pandemic is worrying the workforce, especially in the transportation sector since transportation has been one of Malaysia's crucial sectors. The problem of losing jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic largely contributes to low economic Malaysians, especially in the urgent need for change. Thus, adopting a strategic approach is needed to plan and manage workforce trends to prevent a drop in the economy. This study examines the workforce pattern in the transportation sector in Malaysia, comparing them using time series models and forecasting them using the best fit time series model. It studies explicitly the export and import volume in Malaysia from the year 2010 until 2020 and the number of workforces in the transportation sector in Malaysia from 2012 until 2020. The data were used to model and forecast the export and import volume and the number of workers in the transportation sector in Malaysia. It is found that ARIMA (0, 1, 1) model was able to produce the forecasted values for the year 2020 for export volume in Malaysia based on the values of RMSE and Holt's (α = 0.34, β = 0.01, γ = 0.3) were able to forecast for export volume in Malaysia when the MAE and MAPE values were considered. Also, it is found that ARIMA (2, 1, 3) model was able to produce the forecast value for import volume in Malaysia for 2020 when the MAE and RMSE were used while Holt's model (α = 0.41, β = 0.04, γ = 0.5) when MAPE value was considered. Lastly, ARIMA (1,1,1) was used as the selection criteria for forecasting the number of workers in the transportation sector in Malaysia for 2020 when RMSE and MAPE were used Holt's (α =0.62, β = 0.00000000000000034694) model meanwhile when MAE value was considered. © 2022 IEEE.

A Conceptual Framework for an Integrated Healthcare Information Systems from an Organizational Perspective

Healthcare information technology integration is an essential factor to improve healthcare quality services. During COVID 19 epidemic, there is a high necessity to set up a comprehensive framework for integrating healthcare information systems (IHIS). Most of the existing works address this issue from technical perspectives. This study aims to create a comprehensive understanding and identify the crucial dimensions of the IHIS at an organizational level using the human, organization, and technology model (HOT-fit model). To achieve the study's goal, the qualitative evaluation method is adopted to explore and analyze the existing studies on IHIS from organizational perspectives. The study investigates the key dimensions that affect the development of IHIS at the organizational level, which do not adequately discuss in the previous studies. The findings indicate that the key IHIS dimensions could be recognized by using the three dimensions of IT infrastructure, and organizational process, as well as the human factor. From the other side, the organization would be able to curb the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak as the conceptual framework highlighted the relationships among the dimensions by facilitating the information sharing within an organization to attain coordination and cooperation between stakeholders which can improve the monitoring capability in the system. This study contributes to academic research, by producing a conceptual framework for IHIS dimensions. As the framework can be used as a guideline by healthcare decision-makers and healthcare project managers to understand the integration requirements at the organizational level. © 2022 IEEE.

Incidence and significance of vitamin d deficiency at inflammatory bowel disease inception in the covid era

Background: Vitamin D, a key regulator of immune response, is known to be lower in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) patients than the general population. Disparity in the incidence of deficiency between ethnic groups has previously been demonstrated. We measured vitamin D in a unique multi-ethnic inception cohort to correlate this with traditional IBD scores and patient reported outcome measures including the 'IBD Disk'. Methods: Data regarding demographics, ethnicity, faecal calprotectin (FCAL) and baseline blood results including Vitamin D was collected prospectively from January-October 2021, from adults presenting with suspected IBD. Montreal classification, Harvey-Bradshaw Index or Partial Mayo score, endoscopic disease severity indices and IBD Disk score were documented in those with confirmed diagnosis at endoscopy. Vitamin D deficiency was defined as <50nmol/l. Results: 179 patients had a Vitamin D level recorded;58 Ulcerative colitis (UC), 58 Crohn's disease (CD), 53 non-IBD controls and 10 still awaiting diagnosis. 44(76%) CD, 32(55%) UC and 28(53%) non-IBD control patients were Vitamin D deficient at first presentation. Median levels were lowest in CD, with a significant difference between CD and non-IBD (median 35nmol/l;IQR 24.05 vs. median 48.9nmol/l;IQR 49.1;p=0.004). Regression analysis demonstrated patients with Crohn's disease were four times more likely to have Vitamin D deficiency compared to UC (OR 4.08;95% CI 1.35-12.36) at diagnosis. No correlation was seen between absolute vitamin D levels or vitamin deficiency state and faecal calprotectin when controlled for various factors regardless of the IBD subtype. The cohort distributions are demonstrated in Figure 1. Within the IBD cohort, Vitamin D levels were significantly lower in Black or Asian patients vs White patients (median 28.5;IQR 20.85 vs median 43.3;IQR 33.95;p=0.004). Figure 2 provides an overview of the cohort distributions. Vitamin D levels at presentation, as demonstrated in Table 1, did not correlate with Disease activity markers (DAMS) whereas baseline haemoglobin did, albeit weakly. Interestingly, Vitamin D and Haemoglobin correlated without reaching statistical significance (Spearman's rho 0.149;p=0.08). Conclusion: Our inception dataset demonstrates high rates of Vitamin D deficiency comparable to prior studies in IBD patients. Both CD and Black or Asian ethnicity were strongly associated with Vitamin D deficiency. Baseline Vitamin D did not correlate with disease activity markers whereas anaemia showed consistent weak association. Our study demonstrates the problem of hypovitaminosis D and the importance of measurement and supplementation, particularly in Black and Asian CD patients, from diagnosis.

Impact and Control of Drug Therapy Guidelines for Tumor Patients During the Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Epidemic

Since December 2019, many unexplained viral pneumonia cases have been found in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. It was later confirmed that the outbreak's causative agent was a new coronavirus. The virus was temporarily named "2019-new coronavirus" (2019-nCoV) by the World Health Organization (WHO). The diseases caused by 2019-nCoV were called by the National Health and Health Commission of China "New coronavirus pneumonia" (Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia, NCP) and was named "Coronavirus disease 2019" (COVID-19) by the WHO. The outbreak of NCP seriously affected the lives of the public. This article focuses on the group of cancer patients, comprehensively considers the social, medical resources and family issues to analyze the possible impact of the epidemic on cancer patients' drug treatment and health and makes recommendations for cancer patients' management. © 2021 Razi Ahmed, Shahrinaz Ismail, Shafiza Mohd Shariff, Anwer Irshad Burney and Nawaf Waqas. All Rights Reserved.

A tri-level AHP approach for port logistics personnel performance evaluation

Nowadays, logistics industry has become a critical component in the commercial link, and it is very important on how to find the optimal performance in sea-trade. Besides, modern logistics industry has brought many additional values in order to increase the value of transportation services such as electronic tracking, warehousing, and resources distribution and 90% of global trade in Malaysia is done through marine transport. As the marine logistics industry grows globally, the need for talents and manpower to support the industry, especially in port operations also grow. Delivering a flawless service becomes a source of competitive advantage for the logistics industry. To do that, a good development of capability of professionals in terms of manpower and expertise is needed. Moreover, with the current situation of pandemic COVID-19, a capable professional in port operations are highly needed in order to revive the industry after being affected as well as ensuring its future growth and sustainability. This development of capability includes many criteria which reflected the capability and competency of personnel might have changed over time and so its performance evaluation, especially before and after the pandemic. Thus, a good business performance measurement system is a very powerful tool to excite and monitor personnel of a company. It is rare to find a well-designed system even though there is a lot of interests and studies in creating performance measurement model. In this study, a systematic approach for multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) tool, the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is adapted in determining the criteria for evaluating the performance of port logistics personnel. Performance criteria from the literature and expert opinions were utilized prior to the development of the performance evaluation model. A tri-level hierarchical structure of criteria, with three (3) criteria at the first level, six (6) sub-elements at the second levels and 19 sub-elements in the third levels (with 3 for each sub-element of the second level) is adapted in the study. The result shows that among the sub-elements at second level, Team Cooperation is the most considered criteria when evaluating the performance of a personnel in port logistics for both countries Malaysia and Indonesia where the sub-elements that scored the highest are 0.31 for Cooperation Spirit in Malaysia and 0.27 for Sharing Knowledge in Indonesia. Both elements are from second level of sub-elements of Team Cooperation. 4 more criteria are having very minimal weightage. The concern of the AHP is to obtain consistent judgement from the expert that somehow will affect the results and vary accordingly. © IEOM Society International.

Intensive care unit admission and mortality risk prediction in covid19 patients with spectrum of comorbidities using clinical laboratory and CT severity score

Introduction: Treatment of patients with COVID-19 in intensive care unit (ICU) has been a significant challenge. Early detection of COVID-19 related severity is critical for timely management of such patients. This retrospective observational study aimed to evaluate clinical characteristics such as laboratory parameters, associated comorbidities, computed tomography (CT)-based semi-quantitative score, and cumulative correlative measurement of critically ill COVID-19 patients to assess the requirement for early ICU admission. Materials and methods: Data from the treatment record of COVID-19 patients with severe pneumonia was collected at a tertiary care government medical institution from 1st May, 2020 to 30th May, 2020. Binary logistic regression analysis, specificities and sensitivities of maximum D-dimer, ferritin, other laboratory measures, and CT-based semi-quantitative score for outcome cutoffs were calculated to predict early indicators of ICU admission and mortality.

EXPLORING MALAYSIAN ACADEMICS' PERCEPTION ON WORKING FROM HOME (WFH) AS A FLEXIBLE WORKING ARRANGEMENT DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Flexible working arrangements have gained prominence in the last decade, due to its ability to provide employees' work-life balance and less stress, which are important for productivity. Although this work-place concept has been used in other industries, many Malaysian universities continue with the conventional work-place policies, with close monitoring. With the COVID-19 pandemic, Working from Home (WFH), a common form of flexible working arrangement, has become a new normal globally, transforming the entire workplace model, irrespective of business or industry. The objective of this study was to explore the perception of Malaysian academics on working from home, with regards to work-life balance and stress. Using a qualitative approach of focus group discussion, eight academics, from both public and private universities, were interviewed online. Findings revealed that WFH helps to improve work-life balance due to reduced stress for academics in Malaysia. This outcome will be useful in policymaking, where organizations are planning to change work policies to enhance employee productivity, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic experience. As knowledge workers' mind never switches off a structured WFH policy can contribute to academics' well-being, which is also in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 3 (SDG 3).