ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought dramatic changes in many business sectors, particularly the commercial vehicle business, which before the COVID-19 pandemic has already experienced a slowdown due to uncertainty in global supply and demand. The introduction of the movement control order (PKP) and several other measures to curb the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic have exacerbated the efforts to recover from the current challenges. This study investigates the effect of COVID-19 disruption on supply chain resilience among commercial vehicle businesses in Malaysia. The results show that all variables significantly influence the supply chain resilience capability in the commercial business sector except for the risk management culture, which requires further validation. In the event of a disruption, the supply chain resilience capability of the organization is critical to absorb and adapt to the changes caused by the interruption and innovatively seek improvement in the operation to become stronger and prepared for any similar disruption in the future. The findings of this study provide valuable information to the business practitioner affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It also enriches the knowledge of academicians for similar research in supply chain resilience field. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic and movement control order that started in 2020 has changed the shopping behavior to online shopping. This also increases in-home delivery services by the shipping providers. However, since the virus can be transmitted through surface transmission, the buyer is advised to avoid touching surfaces and clean or sanitize surfaces regularly with standard disinfectants to prevent the spread. In addition, with an increase in the parcel delivery process, missing parcels also will be one of the main problems that the buyer will be facing. This study has developed a smart parcel box with sanitizer to overcome the issues stated above. Smart in this context refers to the notification that the buyer will get once the parcel is placed inside the parcel box, the box itself will be locked once the parcel is in and only can be opened by the authorized user. This study utilizes the Arduino IDE software to control the operation of the locks and notifications. The notifications are linked to the Blynk Application that needs to be installed on the buyer's smartphone. The software is also coded to run the motor that controls the standard disinfectants that will be sprayed on the parcel for a few seconds. The results indicate one solution for the online shopping addicts to shop while avoiding the spread of COVID-19 viruses. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has urged the government of Malaysia to implement Movement Control Order (MCO) which forces working people to work from home while students to study from home. People's satisfaction on work from home is crucial in determining their work productivity and efficiency whereas student's satisfaction on study from home is important for their learning effectiveness. There is no work has been done yet for exploring data mining techniques to build a model for predicting work or study from home satisfaction using Malaysia as a case study. This paper aimed to identify the best data mining model for predicting the work or study from home satisfaction. The prediction model is learned by analyzing the demographic, the personality traits, and the work from home experience collected from a group of Malaysia people. This study attempts to investigate four data mining techniques that are the decision tree, linear kernel support vector machine, polynomial support vector machine, and radial basis support vector machine. Experiment results show that the radial basis support vector machine outperformed other techniques in predicting the work or study from home satisfaction of Malaysia's community. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Pendekar Siber is in the Malay language which means a cyber warrior. A cyber warrior is a computer expert engaged in the defense of information systems against cyber-attacks. It refers to an educational program to groom young people to empower themselves and their peers capable to combat cyber threats. This is because cyber threats are on the rise especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and movement control orders (MCO). Cyber threats to children are becoming more significant since they were dependent on electronic gadgets and computer devices to do online learning activities at home. Although MCO had been lifted and schools were reopened, children are still reliant on these gadgets to play online games, watching content on social media and interact with their online friends. Some of them cannot be separated from these online activities until they neglect their studies and affect their physical and mental health. Despite the responsibilities of parents to monitor their children's use of gadgets, this paper posits the role of young people to address these threats. Thus, Pendekar Siber program was introduced, community engagement programs were conducted, and surveys were carried out at a bottom 40% (B40) urban poor community in Selangor, Malaysia. The surveys were done to understand the children's Internet use and their cybersecurity awareness. Based on our findings, this paper recommends ways that can be implemented by empowering young people to address cyber threats faced by themselves and their peers. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
This study aims to identify the relationship between work stress, burnout and mental health of academic staff during the implementation of the Movement Control Order (MCO) when the only possible mode of teaching was the fully online mode. It has been hypothesized that there are significant relationships between work stress and mental health among academics;and work stress (work overload, role ambiguity, lack of autonomy) can predict a significant amount of the variance in mental health (anxiety/insomnia, social dysfunction) of academic staff during the online teaching, after taking the possible effect of burnout into consideration. This study involved 106 academic staff (73 females, 33 males) to complete an online survey which included the Work Stress Scale, Burnout Measure, and General Health Questionnaire 28. The findings of this study showed the significant positive relationships between all variables of work stress and mental health;work overload and burnout predicted anxiety/insomnia;lack of autonomy and burnout predicted social dysfunction. These findings have implications for Human Resources practices in efforts in reducing work stress and improving mental health of academic staff during these trying times. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 disease is a highly contagious disease that causes respiratory tracts and lung infections, where some of the cases can lead to fatalities. Malaysia recorded the first Covid-19 case on January 25th, 2020. Although the government at the time considered the disease was not a threat, as the days went by the cases started to increase. The total lockdown measure, also known as the movement control order (MCO) was declared by the new Government of Malaysia following the surge of Covid-19 cases in early March 2020. The new prime minister, following a change of government, announced that schools were to be closed, offices and non-essential business activities were told to cease operation, and people were ordered to stay in their homes. As a newly industrialized country, with little economic activities, there were significant drops in the energy demand in Malaysia. This paper analyzes the change in the power demand and energy consumption trend in Malaysia before, during and after the Covid-19 total lockdown. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
In this preliminary study, we compared Night Sky Brightness (NSB) in Shah Alam during the implementation of Movement Control Order (MCO) lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic in June 2021 with the same duration in June 2020. Sky Quality Meter (SQM) was used to measure NSB in unit Magnitude per Square Arc Second (MSAS) while temperature was in Celsius and they were collected in Shah Alam, Selangor. The air quality information was obtained from the Malaysian AQI website. This project investigates the impact of economic and social activities during MCO lockdown to NSB, air pollution and temperature. Within the analysed time frame, the results indicate that there are some effects produced by MCO lockdown to the observed light or NSB, temperature and air pollution. On the average, the NSB, temperature and AQI have decreased by 0.25, 1.55 and 1.0, respectively. This shows that during the MCO lockdown, the air is cleaner and cooler;and the sky is darker which originates from improved air quality due to less air and road traffics;plus less industrial and human outdoor activities. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The world had witnessed the various positive environmental implications of nationwide during movement control orders (MCO) brought upon by COVID-19, such as the quality of clean rivers and air. However, these situations are not the same with solid waste management contexts, especially the generation of food waste, plastics, and clinical waste. This study examined the research gap by conducting research based on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for solid waste generation during MCO and the month of Ramadan in Malaysia. This study used the data related to solid waste generation, which was collected from SWCorp and for the COVID-19 cases, the data was collected from the Ministry of Health Malaysia. The data of solid waste generated were collected from January 1st to June 4th at the landfill of 8 states. According to SWCorp data, the trend of solid waste generation during MCO (average 6,601,72 tan metric/day) is lower than before MCO (average 7,566.05 tan metric/day) and during Ramadan (average 6,745.19 tan metric/day). The trend of declining solid waste generation from the industrial sector has drastically decreased;however, domestic solid waste among households has continued to increase at a moderate rate. This study provides information on the amount of solid waste generation in Peninsular Malaysia, especially during the pandemic COVID-19, where it provides the guideline for stakeholders to take relevant strategies towards reducing solid waste generation during and after pandemic COVID-19.
ABSTRACT
In 2020, PCSB implemented the first permanent Plug & Abandonment (P&A) campaign for three Subsea wells in a gas field offshore Malaysia. The main objective of the campaign was to establish two (2) barriers for every movable hydrocarbon or overpressure bearing sand by placing laterally extended cement plug across impermeable formation with enough formation strength to handle the pressure of the formation to be isolated. The unique case of this operation was the challenges to execute PCSB's first subsea P&A operation in gas field Malaysia during pandemic situation. In March 2020, the Malaysian government imposed Movement Control Order (MCO) to curb the spread of the COVID-19. A semi-submersible rig was on-hired a week after government initiated the MCO, resulted in the rig preparation being badly hampered due to manpower management and material fabrication and delivery. PCSB was exposed to expensive rig daily rate that had to be managed. Four (4) main challenges were encountered during operation: safe protection for workers, expensive standby cost, manpower management and material fabrication and delivery. This paper, from the 'project management' point of view, describes the journey of managing rig operation during PCSB's first subsea wells P&A in Malaysia efficiently amidst the pandemic by reducing the impact of COVID-19 on project cost. With the experience of managing rig for subsea well operation, a complex operation in Malaysia, amidst pandemic, PCSB sharing on the experience is beneficial to provide context setting and benchmark on maintaining the efficiency of operation. Wells successfully met the objective of operation with no incident occurred, negotiated reduction on standby cost and managed to bring critical manpower on time during operation. Copyright © 2021, Society of Petroleum Engineers
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic brings with it serious challenges that have a huge impact on the construction industry. Malaysia was placed under lockdown during the pandemic and a Movement Control Order (MCO) was enforced on 18 March 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This research seeks to determine the challenges and impacts of COVID-19 and the measures taken by the Government on the Malaysian construction industry. The literature review provides the theoretical background for the study and establishes, enhances, and consolidates the knowledge base for this study. A questionnaire survey using Google form was used to collect the data. One hundred questionnaires were distributed to gather the data. This survey was carried out in Klang Valley, Kuala Lumpur. This study used the SPSS software to analyze the collected data employing frequency analysis, descriptive analysis, and chart builder. The findings of this research contribute to the body of knowledge on the challenges and impacts of COVID-19 and the measures taken by the Government on the construction industry in Malaysia. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
ABSTRACT
Since the worldwide emergence of Covid-19 pandemic, several rules are imposed to curb its spreading. Logging visitor body temperatures before entering a premise is one of the rules enforced on every store in Malaysia. Following the rule requires a non-contact thermometer and a logbook prepared by storekeepers to record their customer body temperatures. For a large shopping mall where many small stores exist, the body temperature recording procedure is repeated at every store. For many customers, repetitive procedure could turn into a hassle, causing long waiting queues, and at the same time difficult for people with disabilities. Furthermore, maintaining this procedure adds additional tasks on the employed staffs for ensuring customers abide with the rule. The proposed mobile phone application is aimed towards improving the body temperature recording procedure by using QR code. The application consists of three main modules, by which a user can record body temperature and combined with the user's personal identification, it timestamps the information as a QR code. From the generated QR code, storekeepers could verify the information easily and if the scanner function is integrated with a fully-automated door access, an automatic entry can be enabled as well, which could help reducing the waiting queue at the store. From the users point of view, majority of them agree that the application is convenient and suitable for its purpose. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The world has a corona virus epidemic and Malaysia does not have an immune system. The Covid-19 epidemic causes considerable global disruption in an effort to stop this spread, leading to lockups in various countries, including Malaysia. The Malay Government proposed the Movement Control Order on 18 March 2020 in its lock-out option (MCO). Malaysian companies were therefore heavily affected by the MCO in this particular construction industry. There is a strong influence on the economy of the country. The epidemic of COVID-19 affected the global financial market, Malaysia, and others. The aim of this study is to analyze the construction industry, project budget, contractual arrangements, construction occupational health and safety, and other relevant factors in the construction industry, with the objective of examining the impacts and challenges facing the Malaysian construction industry. The results of this study could help stakeholders understand the impact of COVID-19 on Malaysia's various industries. The results indicate that the construction industry has faced numerous challenges including time periods, interrupted revenues, deferred licenses, travel bans, significant health and safety concerns and labor and equipment deficiencies, among other issues, all of which have affected the timely delivery of projects in the area of infrastructure. This also illustrates that Malaysian governments and construction agencies have taken steps to protect the construction industry against negative effects of the pandemic, such as financial support programmes, the digitalization of processes, service charges and fees, medical centers, and other contract mediation services. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the world since December 2019 and it had been serious in Malaysia in middle of March 2020. In Malaysia, the Movement Control Order (MCO) has forced many sectors to cease operation except those in essentials sectors. The pandemic has transformed many sectors including tertiary education dramatically mainly in its digital applications. Although face-to-face teaching and learning has been the bread and butter for most of tertiary higher learning institutions, the pandemic has forced 360-degree change in the way teaching and learning materials to be delivered. This includes the transformation in assessment methods that forced lecturers to find the best alternative in assessing their students. This paper reports the lessons learned in teaching Software Engineering course that has been transformed to 100 percent online teaching and learning (OLTnL) during COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia between March to June 2021. The subjects were second year students of two sections of 44 and 37 respectively who enrolled Software Engineering course as one of the core courses at the selected faculty offering a Bachelor of Computer Science program. The findings reflect that the students who are majoring in Computer Science still face challenges in OLTnL even though they have been in the third semester of virtual lectures since March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some insights from the lessons learned could be considered if OLTnL continues. © 2021 CEUR-WS. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The issue of fake news spread on social media especially during the pandemic of COVID-19 has become a major threat to various sectors and agencies in Malaysia. It is observed that the new norm that requires Malaysian to work and stay at home during Movement Control Order (MCO) has contributed to the rapid spread of the fake news. In this research, we study the impact of the fake news during the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia and how the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the country would affect the number of fake news being spread locally. We also conducted a correlation analysis between the number of fake news and the number of COVID-19 cases. Result shows a significant strong positive correlation between the two studied variables. Besides, we built a fake news prediction model using linear regression algorithm to predict the number of fake news based the number of COVID-19 cases. However, the model did not show a good performance. This paper is targeted to assist the government, especially Majlis Keselamatan Negara, during the formulation of action plan and decision making in the effort to hinder the spread of fake news, by implying the constructed formula to predict the number of fake news in a day based on the number of COVID-19 positive cases. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.