Sustainable manufacturing practices (SMPs) have received enormous attention in current years as an effective solution to support the continuous growth and expansion of the automotive manufacturing industry. This reported study was conducted to examine confirmatory factor analysis for SMP such as manufacturing process, supply chain management, social responsibility, and environmental management based on automotive manufacturing industry. The results of confirmatory factor analysis show that four factors for SMP implementation in Malaysian automotive industry were developed and verified. For the next agenda, the authors are looking at the confirmatory factor analysis of sustaining lean improvement in Malaysian automotive industry. The paper proposed with a future direction end of this research.
BackgroundStrategically located in the centre of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Malaysia offers vast opportunities for global automotive and component manufacturers in order to set up manufacturing and distribution operations. Evidence show that Malaysia has been attracted global automotive companies (e.g. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, BMW, and Peugeot) and international component manufacturers (e.g. Delphi, Continental, Denso, and Bosch) in order to launch their product in this country and meet the highest consumer demands (Malaysian-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry 2012). However, Malaysian government should also regulate the entry of foreign products in order to ensure the local automotive performance can survive in the local and global market. Thus, a regulatory structure practice was gazette to protect and control the automotive manufacturing activity. South Africa, for example, could sustain their economic performance by adopting an import substituting policies (Barnes et al. 2004).Due to the rise in these issues, the awareness of Sustainable Manufacturing Practices (SMPs) has become an important element in manufacturing industry. A number of researchers have attempted to refine this broad array of SMPs into the framework.