The coconut palm or scientific name Cocos nucifera L. has been called as ‘Tree of Life’ because of its multiuse. Malaysia remains as one of top ten coconut producing countries in the world and coconut is one of important industrial crops after oil palm, paddy and rubber. As coconut plays a significant source of income and employment for majority of smallholders, this study has therefore been undertaken in order to recommend strategies for policy decisions and formulate suitable schemes and programs to ameliorate socio-economic conditions of the coconut smallholders. The present study has brought into focus and issues relating to socio economic status, profitability and production of coconut in Batu Pahat district, Johor. A sample of 152 farmers was selected through a random sampling technique. In addition, the study uses Cost Benefit Analysis and multiple regression model to estimate the factors affecting the profitability of coconut production in Malaysia. The results reveal that the profitability was influenced by different factors including land, labor, fungicides, experience, education and extension visit. While the result for cost benefit analysis showed that in the study area, a cultivation of coconut was a profitable enterprise as indicated by benefit cost ratio, ranging from 5.0- 8.4. On that basis, the article proposes some recommendations to improve profitability of coconut smallholders in the future.

Trading is the most sensitive sector of the economy, directly and indirectly responding to innovative challenges. High competition, political risks and planetary scales have made it susceptible to any globalization fluctuations. Effective management is seen as the most important opportunity to gain competitive advantage. This explains the increased interest in the system of indicators of management system evaluation in the business processes in the supply chains. The aim of this paper is to develop and substantiate analytical approaches to the study of the status of transnational trade economic relationships with the identification of significant impact indicators and vulnerability indicators. The globalization aspect of the existing trend of world trade (export-import) among differentiated groups of countries is justified, distinguishing the forecast component. A two-tier model of business process “reliability management” has been constructed, taking into account the results of linear regression models based on the profiles of Australia and New Zealand.

Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP) is considered as an important project scheduling problem. However, increasing dimensions of a project, whether in number of activities or resource availability, cause unused resources through the planning horizon. Such phenomena may increase makespan of a project and also decline resource-usage efficiency. To solve this problem, many methods have been proposed before. In this article, an effective backward-forward search method (BFSM) is proposed using Greedy algorithm that is employed as a part of a hybrid with a two-stage genetic algorithm (BFSM-GA). The proposed method is explained using some related examples from literature and the results are then compared with a forward serial programming method. In addition, the performance of the proposed method is measured using a mathematical metric. Our findings show that the proposed approach can provide schedules with good quality for both small and large scale problems.

This paper examines the labor productivity gap between exporting and non-exporting Vietnamese manufacturing firms in industrialization during the period from 2010 to 2016 using enterprise-level panel data drawn from Vietnamese Annual Enterprise Censuses. Results show that the labor productivity of the manufacturing sectors increased during the study period. It can be concluded that the firms' productivity contributed to the current industrialization in Vietnam. On top of that, some manufacturing sectors with increasing labor productivity in the study period, namely: Fabricated metal products (code 25), Basic metals (code 24), Motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers (code 29), Computer, electronic and optical products (code 26), Leather and related products (code 15), Machinery and equipment not yet classified (code 28), Furniture (code 31), Electrical equipment (code 27), Other non-metallic mineral products (code 23), Other transport equipment (code 30), Wearing apparel (code 14), and Food products (code 10). Vietnam’s government policy might play a crucial role in stimulating the current industrialization by targeting selective manufacturing sectors. Decomposing labor productivity gap between export and non-exporting firms, the results show that labor productivity in the former is about 57.5 percent lower than in the latter. By using Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method, several firm-level variables are found to contribute significantly to the productivity gap via the endowment effect and the structural effect. Overall, the endowment effect surpasses the structural effect in the sample period. Among the factor contributions, capital stock plays the most important role. Empirical studies about the impact of the related policy on the manufacturing industries will be fruitful research agenda.

This paper presents the problem of redesigning a supply network of large scale by considering variability of the demand. The central problematic takes root in determining strategic decisions of closing and adjusting of capacity of some network echelons and the tactical decisions concerning to the distribution channels used for transporting products. We have formulated a deterministic Mixed Integer Linear Programming Model (MILP) and a stochastic MILP model (SMILP) whose objective functions are the maximization of the EBITDA (Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization). The decisions of Network Design on stochastic model as capacities, number of warehouses in operation, material and product flows between echelons, are determined in a single stage by defining an objective function that penalizes unsatisfied demand and surplus of demand due to demand changes. The solution strategy adopted for the stochastic model is a scheme denominated as Sample Average Approximation (SAA). The model is based on the case of a Colombian company dedicated to production and marketing of foodstuffs and supplies for the bakery industry. The results show that the proposed methodology was a solid reference for decision support regarding to the supply networks redesign by considering the expected economic contribution of products and variability of the demand.

Today, the stock market has increasingly proven its important role and become a focus of many participants with different purposes and positions. In the stock market, the information is like a blood vessel and energy source which feed the market especially financial information. The securities market of a country that wants to be active and attracts many investors, the transparency of information is considered as an important factor. This paper studies the extent of factors influencing the disclosure in the financial statement of listed food industry companies on the Vietnam’s stock market. Based on the information of 60 companies that belong to food industry listed on the Vietnam’s stock market, the disclosure indexes and regression model are employed to measure the disclosure by SPSS 22.0. The results demonstrate that, the extent of disclosure is significantly influenced by efficient use of assets, liquidity, independent audit, size, the percentage of board members not participating in management and the number of board members.

Since 2001, the International Accounting Standards Board has issued a set of accounting principles with the name International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Along with the adoption of IFRS in many countries around the world, Vietnam is preparing a roadmap for the implementation of IFRS by 2022. This study was conducted by surveying 119 directors and corporate accountants for the reasons: (1) to collect their opinions about the roadmap and the scope of IFRS implementation; (2) to investigate the benefits to companies, investors, policy makers and government agencies; and (3) to assess the challenges of IFRS implementation. The results show that IFRS implementation increases the comparability and quality of financial information, reduces investment risks, increases market efficiency and attracts foreign direct investment. However, organizations face many difficulties to adopt IFRS as cost, human resources, legal and market issues. Analysis and comparison with the Sample Test show that there is no difference in assessing benefits and challenges by qualifications, gender, position, region nor firm size. ANOVA analysis showed that there is a difference in the benefits for policy makers by age, and for investors by type of business. This study also suggests implications in policies for the implementation of IFRS in Vietnam.

The present research work investigated the machining of AISI304 austenitic stainless steel in terms of machining force evolution, power consumption, specific cutting force and surface roughness where a factorial experiment design and analysis of variance technique were used and several factors were evaluated for their effects on each level. The case of dry turning process was studied based on design of experiments in order to obtain empirical equations characterizing material machinability according to cutting conditions such as cutting speed, feed rate and depth of cut and the latter ones were put in relationship with the machining output variables (Ra, Fc, Kc and Pc) through the response surface methodology (RSM). Results revealed that feed rate was the most preponderant factor affecting surface roughness (71.04%). However, the depth of cut affects considerably cutting force and cutting power by (60.74% and 67.11%), respectively. In addition, the specific cutting force was found affected significantly by cutting speed with a contribution of 41.43%. The quadratic model of RSM associated with response optimization technique and composite desirability was used to find optimum values of machining parameters (104.54 m/min, 0.08 mm/rev and 0.295 mm).

This research is conducted to investigate the impact of income diversification on bank liquidity creation and the financial performance of Vietnamese commercial banks from 2007 to 2017. Data were collected from 21 Vietnamese commercial banks. Panel OLS with fixed effects and GMM estimations were employed to process data. The results show that diversification had a negative impact on both bank liquidity creation and bank profitability, and thus support the view that Vietnamese commercial banks should remain focusing on their traditional lines of business rather than diversifying towards nontraditional activities since this may lead to both a lower level of liquidity creation and profitability. The findings of this study could draw broad inferences for researchers, policy makers, and bank managers towards more focusing strategies to ensure the health of the banking system.

Laser direct structuring (LDS) is very important step in the MID process and it is a complex process due to different parameters, which influence on this process and its final product. Therefore, it is very important to use a reliable model to predict, analyze and control the performance of the (LDS) process and the quality of the final product. In this work we develop mathematical models by using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Response Surface Methodology (RSM) to study this process. The proposed models are used to study the effect of the LDS parameters on the groove dimensions (width and depth), lap dimensions (groove lap width and height) and finally the heat effective zone (interaction width), which are important to determine the line width/space in the MID products and the metallization profile after the metallization step. We also study the relationship between the LDS parameters and the surface roughness which is very important factor for the adhesion strength of MID structures. Moreover these models capable of finding a set of optimum LDS parameters that provide the required micro-channel dimensions with the best or the suitable surface roughness. A set of experimental tests are carried out to validate the developed ANN and the RSM models. It has been found that the predicted values for the proposal ANN and RSM models were closer to the experimental values, and the overall average absolute percentage errors were 4.02 % and 6.52%, respectively. Finally, it has been found that, the developed ANN model could be used to predict the response of the LDS process more accurately than RSM model.