Purpose Much has been written about the importance of external integration for the integrity of food products. To achieve food integrity, all actors along the supply chain have to be fully integrated and comply with an assurance system or process. The more complex the supply chain operations are, the greater will be the need for integration. This research paper investigates the impact of external integration on compliance with halal standards, as an example of product integrity within the food industry. Design/methodology/approach A survey of 1,000 food manufacturers was conducted. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to test the effect of external integration on compliance with halal standards. Findings The results showed that there were links between halal assurance system and external integration. Nevertheless, it was discovered that only customer integration mediated the relationship between the halal assurance system and product quality and production cost. Practical implications The practical implications of the findings extend to managers in the food industry who might pursue supply chain integration as a structure to achieve excellence. The findings suggested that the deployment of a halal assurance system has a positive effect on operational performance. Furthermore, the results show that managers who wish to implement the halal assurance system should carefully invest in an external integration strategy, depending upon the operational performance improvement intended. Originality/value This research is one of the first studies to investigate the effects of external integration on halal food in general and is the first empirical investigation of the effect of safeguarding halal integrity on operational performance.

According to the literature pertaining to human resource development (HRD), a supervisor's role in training programs has two major characteristics: support and communication. The ability of supervisors to play effective roles in training programs may increase employees' job performance. More importantly, extant research in this field reveals that the effect of the supervisor's role in training programs on job performance is indirectly affected by the motivation to learn. The nature of this relationship is less emphasized in training management literature. Therefore, this study was conducted to measure the effect of the supervisor's role in training programs and the motivation to learn on job performance using 91 usable questionnaires gathered from employees who have worked in a state library in East Malaysia, Malaysia. The outcomes of stepwise regression analysis displayed that the inclusion of motivation to learn in the analysis had increased the effects of the two supervisor's role elements of support and communication on job performance. This result demonstrates that the motivation to learn acts as a mediating variable in the training model of the organizational sample. The implications of this study to the theory and practice of training programs, methodological and conceptual limitations as well as future directions are elaborated.

In this research, diffusion bonding was carried out to produce transition joints between mild steel A36 (Fe A36) and aluminium Al 5083 (AA5083) with the presence of gallium (Ga) as an interlayer between the two faying surfaces. The microstructural development and interfacial growth of intermetallic compounds at the interface layer between Fe A36 and AA5083 after the diffusion bonding process were investigated. The joining was performed by clamping the two materials with a Ga interlayer and then heated in a furnace. The interlayer developed from this diffusion heating in air condition provides an average thickness of 30 μm. Characterization of intermetallic compounds was conducted using SEM-EDX and XRD. The results showed that SEM-EDX confirmed the occurrence of interdiffusion of elements from Fe A36 and AA5083 present at interlayer. XRD analysis reveals the formation of Fe3Al at the diffusion layer.

A dedicated or specialized friction stir welding (FSW) machine is quite costly especially for pipe joining. Therefore, not many institutions manage to conduct their research on FSW at their facilities. Besides that, the difficulty to design a jig that can hold the complex shape such as pipe section tightly and easily to be removed during and after the FSW process respectively will nullify the intentions. In many institutions, there was either conventional or CNC milling machine available in their workshops. Thus, a jig called orbital clamping unit (OCU) was designed to suit this milling machine. It acts as an additional device to enable this milling machine to run as FSW machine at a lower cost, hence fully utilized the available facility in the workshop. Several good samples were successfully produced by using this jig and milling machine