Glove Maker: Supermax to maintain base in Malaysia

Medical gloves manufacturer Supermax Corp Bhd said it would maintain its base in Malaysia despite the rising challenges in operating business here.

“We are here to stay and will not move out our production facilities (from Malaysia),” said Executive Chairman and Group Managing Director Datuk Seri Stanley Thai.

This is despite the fact that it is bracing for a lower margin amid cut-throat competition from rivals in Thailand and China, as well as rising costs of doing business locally.

Despite still retaining leadership in the industry, Malaysian gloves makers lost 4-5 per cent market share to their peers in Thailand and China in terms of exports to the United States in the first quarter of 2014.

Oneof the reasons for the market share loss was due to market players, including Supermax, which chose to pass on the higher business costs to the customers.

That came in the wake of the scrapping of fuel subsidy, the implementation of minimum wage, as well as adjustments in electricity tariffs earlier in the year.

Malaysia also lost the generalised system preference (GSP) for duty-free status for imports to Europe and are now dutiable of about 2.7% while Thailand, China and Indonesia are still enjoying the GSP programme.

To maintain its global competitiveness, Supermax has to brace for a lower margin of 9-11 per cent going forward, or risk losing its market share to rivals.

“Gone were the days that we have a margin as high as 15-20 per cent,” he said.

To counter the rising costs, manufacturers have embarked on automation processes for production lines and is in the midst of looking for alternative energy sources

/Bernama:10-06-2014

 

Disclaimer: Views or opinions expressed are solely those of the Author and should be used with discretion. The Author shall not be held liable for any acts or omissions arising from the use of the information. The user will be personally liable for any damages or other liability arising hereof.

Read more

Building Pipeline: Leadership

Are leaders born? Can they be cultivated? Where do we get good leaders?

Great leaders are like rare commodity. They are hard to find. Even if they are found they "do not come cheap".

Thus many Companies have resorted to identify and develop individuals for leadership roles.

Obviously, it must start with the hiring process where the individuals are being identified through a set of assessments.

High Performance Leaders can be cultivated and produced through proper nurturing, growing, training and work exposures. Programs are developed for each individual, at each level, as every level demands different skill sets.

Basic process to build leaders are:

Leadership Assessment: from the existing talent pool within the organisation, potential individual can be assessed through his hard and soft skills which include, but not limited to, work achievements, capability & competency, aptitude and attitude, personality, internal drives, social interactive skills ...

Structured Programs: these are the learning and development Programs crafted for individual and teams.

Accelerated Learning: this is customised program for high potential individual to be quickly "grafted" into an operation for immediate to mid-term business development and growth. The Program content is on internship, with "hands-on day-to-day" job participation, one-to-one mentoring with a senior staff, assigned projects, relevant tailored knowledge and skill trainings ... This Program will normally have a time frame of 9 to 12 months.

In ensuring the success of leadership building, it is important that the total Organisation, is committed and with the right eco-system. This is not only from the Office of the CEO and the HR department but down to each individual in the Organisation. Rewards and Incentives must be tailored to the environment.

There must also be adequate resources allocated, not only monetary but also time, tools, talent, knowledge and skills to support and build strong leadership pipeline.

/10-06-2014

Disclaimer: Views or opinions expressed are solely those of the Author and should be used with discretion. The Author shall not be held liable for any acts or omissions arising from the use of the information. The user will be personally liable for any damages or other liability arising hereof.

Read more

Need for More Family Medicine Specialists

More family medicine specialists are being trained to beef up primary health care and reduce congestions in hospitals.

Health Director-General, Datuk Seri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said there were now 238 family medicine specialists in health clinics and 70 in university hospitals.

“We still don’t have enough of these specialists and we hope more doctors will pursue a course in family medicine,” he said after the launch of the Primary Care Mini Conference 2014 held in conjunction with World Family Doctors’ Day on 30th May 2014.

Dr Noor Hisham said with the small numbers of such specialists, their services were only available in 25% of the 900 health clinics nationwide.

Each year, the ministry offers 60 post-graduate scholarships for doctors in the government service to pursue a Master in Family Medicine specialisation, a four-year programme in local Universities.

Dr Noor Hisham said the failure rate, however, was high due to the depth and wide spectrum of fields to cover.

“Half of them failed the course and had to resit,” he said, adding that the training of the specialists was part of the 1Care health care transformation efforts to provide better care in the community and reduce congestions in hospitals.

“The presence of family medicine specialists helps to improve the quality of services in health clinics, with services such as laboratory services, diagnostic imaging and specialist-category drugs.

“Services in health clinics will also be broadened to include community mental health, community-based rehabilitation for children with special needs and methadone replacement therapy for recovering drug addicts.”

Prof Datuk Dr D.M. Thuraiappah, convenor of the World Organisation of Family Doctors’ Working Party in Quality and Safety in Family Medicine, said general practitioners sent too many cases deemed “normal” to specialists, resulting in patients making unnecessary visits to hospitals and incurring high costs.

Family medicine specialists function as family doctors like GPs and family physicians, but they have more in-depth knowledge and expertise.

/theSTAR 31-05-2014

Disclaimer: Views or opinions expressed are solely those of the Author and should be used with discretion. The Author shall not be held liable for any acts or omissions arising from the use of the information. The user will be personally liable for any damages or other liability arising hereof.

Read more

Medical Registries to be Maintained.

One of the national institutes of health will be dedicated solely to maintaining medical registries and managing standards for medical practice, said Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam.

“We are trying to develop national registries for the various specialities and various branches of practice,” he said.

“In medicine, we are promoting the concept of registering and maintenance of standards. This is important because in a globalised world. We need to ensure that whatever we’re doing is optimal,” he told reporters after opening the 44th Malaysian Orthopaedic Association Annual Scientific Meeting on 30th May 2014.

This, he said, included using the best instruments capable of producing optimal outcome and ensuring that the skill sets of healthcare professionals and the results they produced were of a certain standard.

Earlier, in his speech, he said many organisations were now moving towards outcome-based management systems to ensure that every ringgit spent in public hospitals and clinics was linked to an outcome.

“For a long time, cost was not a factor in (public) healthcare delivery because the money came from elsewhere,” he said, adding that with times being harder, every ringgit would need to count for something.

One way of promoting optimal outcome, he suggested, was by providing incentives to doctors or clinics that achieve certain clinical targets based on standardised guidelines.

/theSTAR31-05-2014

Disclaimer: Views or opinions expressed are solely those of the Author and should be used with discretion. The Author shall not be held liable for any acts or omissions arising from the use of the information. The user will be personally liable for any damages or other liability arising hereof.

Read more

More Orthopaedics for Malaysia

The government is consistently trying to increase the number of orthopaedic specialists to maintain the quality of medical care in Malaysia.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam said as of January this year, orthopaedic services are provided in 43 hospitals under the Ministry of Health.

The present ratio is 1 orthopaedic per 41,000 populations and the ministry is encouraging the development of orthopaedic specialists and sub-specialists.

There are 600 qualified orthopaedic in Malaysia and annually there are about 40 surgeons trained through the Conjoint Board of Orthopedics leading to the degree of Masters in Orthopaedic surgery.

There is at least one orthopaedic surgeon in each state.

"Orthopaedic service has transformed since the establishment of the first orthopaedic unit at the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital in 1949. Now it has become a stand-alone department with sub-specialty unit," Subramaniam said.

This was disclosed during his opening remarks when officiating the 44th Malaysian Orthopaedic Association (MOA) annual general meeting on 30th May 2014.

Orthopaedic is a branch of medicine that deals with the prevention or correction of injuries or disorders of the skeletal system and associated muscles, joints, and ligaments.

/theSUNdaily 31-05-2014

Disclaimer: Views or opinions expressed are solely those of the Author and should be used with discretion. The Author shall not be held liable for any acts or omissions arising from the use of the information. The user will be personally liable for any damages or other liability arising hereof.

Read more

CCM to expand Pharmaceuticals to reduce exposure to Industry cycles

Chemical Company of Malaysia Bhd (CCM) will continue its expansion efforts in the pharmaceuticals division to mitigate the group's exposure to industry cycles, said Group Managing Director Amirul Feisal Wan Zahir.

"We will continue our strategic focus of extending products in niche areas such as oncology, biotherapeutics and vaccines while improving the product pipeline and customer offerings," he told a media briefing after CCM's 52nd annual general meeting here on Tuesday, 27-05-2014
CCM's profit before tax (PBT) for the financial year ended Dec 31, 2013 dipped to RM20.7 million from RM71.9 million in the previous year, due mainly to lower revenue and gross profit margins at its fertilisers and chemicals divisions.

However, the pharmaceuticals division achieved strong growth in fiscal 2013, recording a 34 per cent increase in PBT on improved sales of prescription drugs to the government, the private sector as well as export markets.

Amirul Feisal said CCM's partnership project such as in joint clinical trials with PanGen Biotech Inc of South Korea in testing new pharmaceutical products is the division's cornerstone strategy in commercialisation of biotherapeutic products, eliminating the need to invest in very expensive clinical trials and long gestation periods to deliver the product to the market.

For the chemicals division, he said CCM will continue to expand its total solutions approach and enhance the portfolio of new products focusing on key industry segments covering health and hygiene, and food and pharmaceutical ingredients.

For its fertilisers division, the group will expand its dealer and distributor network to focus more on small and medium sized estates, he added.

/BERNAMA: 27-05-2014

Disclaimer: Views or opinions expressed are solely those of the Author and should be used with discretion. The Author shall not be held liable for any acts or omissions arising from the use of the information. The user will be personally liable for any damages or other liability arising hereof.

Read more

Malaysia's Competitiveness: Survey Report 2014

Malaysia is the 12th most competitive nation among 60 economies in the World Competitiveness Yearbook 2014 report by the Institute for Management Development (IMD) of the World Competitiveness Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The ranking is an improvement from the 15th position last year and the nation's best performance in the last four years.

Malaysia continues to be ahead of the UK, Australia, Finland, New Zealand, Japan and Korea.

In the category of countries with gross domestic product (GDP) per capita less than US$20,000, Malaysia remained at the top among 29 economies.

Among 29 countries with populations above 20 million, Malaysia improved to the 4th position from 5th last year.

In ASEAN, Malaysia remained at 2nd and in the Asia-Pacific region, Malaysia is ranked 3rd among 13 countries after Singapore and Hong Kong, representing an improvement from 4th place in 2013.

"In government efficiency (15th ) and infrastructure (25th), Malaysia maintained its position. For the economic performance and business efficiency factors Malaysia continues to be in the top 10 among 60 economies with a marked improvement in international investments and ranked 7th instead of 14th last year," Minister for International Trade and Industry Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed said in a statement yesterday.

He said: "They expect to see better performance in the next three to five years as more government initiatives begin to bear fruit."

                                                                                         

  /PEMANDU/The Sun Daily: 22-05-2014. 

Disclaimer: Views or opinions expressed are solely those of the Author and should be used with discretion. The Author shall not be held liable for any acts or omissions arising from the use of the information. The user will be personally liable for any damages or other liability arising hereof.

Read more