Abstract:
Small and Medium Enterprises, the main Malaysian economic contributor are
struggling to identify the best practice compatible with their environment. Despite
lots of previous research suggest that appropriate best practice procedures are
contingent upon company type, none of this research has tried to develop a
principle or model for this sector. This paper tries to prescribe the factors which
pertinent to the best practices among Malaysian job-shop manufacturing SMEs
based on a mix-model approaches and Rasch analysis. The research began with
qualitative approach, where selected SMEs being approached in Kedah and
Terengganu together with an intensive desk research. The outcome of this part is
used to develop the questionnaire for the quantitative part. The respondent for
the quantitative part came from Job-shop type manufacturing SMEs throughout
Peninsular Malaysia. Data from quantitative part was analysed using PASW 18
software (normal statistic approach) and Winsteps (Rasch model approach).
