Lean Manufacturing System (LMS) implementations in Malaysia's automotive industry has not been extensive in its expected reach, as extensive inquiries revealed it being adopted as a "pick-and-choose" system for certain processes or only upon determined levels within the industry. Current implementation strategy does not permit the industry to gain total benefits from the system itself. Undeniably, a few significant factors are being given less significance in multiple stages of LMS' execution. Employee involvement and employee empowerment have been identified as part of these contributing factors in a successful implementation of LMS in an organization. However, important criterion with its contributing aspects of these factors is not given the necessary attention, translating into a lamer impact upon companies embarking on a LMS deployment. This paper examines the impact of these two factors in the implementation of a lean manufacturing system towards achieving the organizational performances in the automotive industry. A questionnaire-survey was administered to gauge the impact of these two factors in an implementation process of a lean manufacturing system and later analyzing the effect towards their organizational performances. Data from 204 automotive parts manufacturers were gathered and analyzed. The correlation between the influencing factors, 5 lean activities and 6 organizational performances were measured. The results gained suggest that the integration between employee involvement and employee empowerment will be a valuable critical organizational capability impacting organizational performances towards the successful implementation of LMS in the Malaysian automotive industry.

Nowadays, due to the high demands from the independence automotive service centers; there are many aftermarket brake pads available at spare parts shops and sold at reasonable prices. Several types of brake pads are available in the market such as semi-metallic and Non-Asbestos brake pads. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the wear of after-market brake pad performance under the normal driving conditions (highway and non-highway). Three types of aftermarket brake pads that mainly used and sold by independent service shop were selected in this study. The data of the wear in thicknesses losses and weight percentage losses were recorded. The results show that brake pad of non-Asbestos Organic type gives the highest wear loss and create a lot of dust. For semi-metallic brake pad type, the result shows the lowest mass loss. Therefore, it is important to select the suitable type of aftermarket brake pads in order to get balance between cost and quality.

The drone becomes more recognized in the civilian sector; the drone's popularity becomes increases as time goes by. Nevertheless, despite the excitement of flying drones, several types of issues occur caused by the drone. In some circumstances, the aeroacoustics noise is a big concern, and quiet drone propellers would be more environmentally friendly to the surrounding area. Moreover, the noise from the drone can be a nuisance for the surrounding population and animals. Therefore, a solution needs to be proposed to reduce the sound level produced by the drone so that drone can be piloted in a surrounding area without breaking any noise level limit set by the government. Hence, the propeller's serrated trailing edge type is the proposed solution to this problem. The serrated trailing edge propeller can reduce several drone noise decibels based on past research. Thus, an investigation is conducted to study the thrust force between the normal propeller and the serrated propeller. The aerodynamic performance of the serrated propeller is analysed using computational fluid dynamic simulation and compared to that of the normal propeller. Ansys Fluent 2021 is used to solve the dependable RNG k-epsilon turbulence model. The thrust force, thrust coefficient, and lift coefficient operating on both propellers were all simulated. The results obtained by the transient approach for propellers have been validated by earlier experimental studies.

The exhaust system plays a vital role in removing the gaseous emissions that is being produced within the combustion chamber during fuel-air mixture activities. The exhaust system is defined as a series of chambers and pipes that starts at the engine and ends at the back of the car with the tail pipe. However if there are any leaks in the exhaust system, it provide a direct path for the emission gaseous including carbon monoxide to enter can be very dangerous as it provides a direct path for carbon monoxide and other dangerous gaseous emissions to enter the cowl vent at the base of the windshield and directly to the passenger compartment. The risk of exposure to these hazardous gaseous is also high especially during vehicle maintenance services in suspected cases of leakages to the exhaust system. The inspection of the exhaust system is done manually in most of the automotive services workshops. In this paper, accidental risks of performing these inspection jobs on a vehicle's exhaust system, performed by a technician are discussed. In order to minimize the risks to technicians or mechanics, a prototype device to detect exhaust leakage was developed using a gas sensor module and a web camera. This device was successfully operated in detecting possible leakages of the exhaust system.

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