Analyses and Findings Behavior of Reading Nutrition Fact Label on Undergraduate Students of Bogor Agricultural University, Indonesia

MIICEMA 2014 10-11 November 2014 Hotel Bangi-Putrajaya, Malaysia 424 Company B Specializing in producing home-made breads, this company has been established since the year 2000 with the beginning capital of RM20, 000. 00. It is owned by a married couple, Encik Badul and Puan Maryam both are not a real name. Encik Badul was a Navy before and he decided to retire early due to certain reason and Puan Maryam was a fulltime housewife before they started this journey. The business started from operating at a small kitchen of the owners’ house – producing in a small scale, and now they have their own production facilities nearby their house. The company produces several types of breads and buns, cookies, muffins, cakes and lots more. The couples faced the ups and downs in business but they never gave up. They work very hard to achieve what they have now. Encik Badul and Puan Maryam collaborated with several government agencies such as Ministry of Agriculture MoA and SME Corporation Malaysia for their machineries, building and construction needed in realizing their production facilities. Apart from that, this company also has been granted halal confirmation certification from JAKIM and cooperated with SIRIM for food quality and packaging. In managing their supply- chain, the companies conducted suppliers’ evaluation in order to find potential suppliers and to determine the likelihood of them in becoming good suppliers. They choose their suppliers through JAKI M’s halal portal and also with some advice from JAKIM, so that they saved their time in choosing good suppliers. Of course, the lists provided by JAKIM is the companies that had been granted halal confirmation certification. One of the important factor being considered in choosing supplier is the proximity of the supplier itself. Encik Badul and Puan Maryam need to save on transportation cost so that they can sell their products at a cheaper price than their competitors. For Encik Badul and Puan Maryam, they are much concerns about the halalness and price of raw materials and ingredients rather than the races of the suppliers. They had an experience of dealing with Malay suppliers but the price is much more expensive. So that they decided to use Chinese suppliers but of course these suppliers were listed by JAKIM as halal suppliers for the raw materials and ingredients needed. In term of what strategy or approaches Encik Badul and Puan Maryam use in managing their supply-chain, they prefer to have few suppliers instead of many suppliers for certain ingredients such as bread yeast and sausages. For non-critical raw materials and ingredients such as flour, egg, milk, sugar and salt, they rely on many suppliers too because sometime some suppliers can offer them better prices rather than other suppliers. Encik Badul and Puan Maryam applied halal confirmation certification from JAKIM at the early stage of their operation at the new premise production facility. They were right when they expected the consumers are going to be very picky and demanded on halal products and they worked on it. Their expectation were pay off when the sales of their breads and buns, cookies, muffins and cakes increased tremendously after they were granted halal confirmation certification.

4. Conclusion

Having shared these two companies ‘approaches in managing their halal supply-chain, there might be more approaches being adopted by other companies as well. However, the findings can be some insight to others in the related industry on how to manage halal supply-chain. These two companies mentioned above applied two most common strategies in managing their supply- MIICEMA 2014 10-11 November 2014 Hotel Bangi-Putrajaya, Malaysia 425 chain: many suppliers and few suppliers’ approaches. It really depending upon which types of raw materials and ingredients are suitable to use few suppliers or many suppliers. In many cases, normally few suppliers deals with critical ingredients where as many suppliers are not. To those companies with halal confirmation certification from JAKIM, not much has been doubted by the consumers because the consumers might feel safe when consuming halal accredited products. However, to other companies in this case Company A, of course they are making sure that all raw materials and ingredients used are halal in nature so that their products are halal too. It is just there is no authority to confirm that it is truly and certified halal. Then, it is up to the consumers to decide whether they want to consume the products or not. Consuming halal products are compulsory for Muslims all over the world. Malaysia halal logo, certified by JAKIM is being recognized internationally. Thus, many producers and manufacturers of FB, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, toiletries and many more are striving very hard to get halal confirmation certification for their products. It can be said that by having certified halal by JAKIM, the products can easily being accepted by Muslims and others, plus there is an opportunity to market the products overseas especially to the Muslims countries, where halal products market is very lucrative. References Amry, S. 2009, March 1. 1977 turmoil prepared SMEs to face new crisis. New Sunday Times. Retrieved from www.nst.com.my . Ang, E. 2010, 28 March. Taxing time for traders: More needs to be done - by both businesses and the Government - to ease the cost of doing business, especially in the current economic environment. The Star. Retrieved from www.thestar.com.my Ghobadian, A., Gallear, D. 1996. Total quality management in SMEs. Omega, 241, 83- 106. Habaradas, R. B. 2008. SME development and technology upgrading in Malaysia: Lessons for the Philippines. Journal of International Business Research, 7Special Issue 1, 89-116. JAKIM Halal Portal, www.halal.gov.my , accessed on 20 June, 2014. Ladzani, W. M., Van Vuuren, J. J. 2002. Entrepreneurship training for emerging SMEs in South Africa. Journal of Small Business Management, 402, 154-161. Normah, M. A. 2007. SMEs: Building blocks for economic growth. Journal of the Department of Statistics, Malaysia, 1 , 1-13. Secretariat to National SME Development Council. 2005. Definitions for Small and Medium Enterprises in Malaysia : Bank Negara Malaysia. SMIDEC. 2008. The Official Website of Small and Medium Industries Development Corporation SMIDEC. Retrieved 19 August, 2008, from http:www.smidec.gov.myindex.jsp?page=home StarBiz. 2009, 27 March. Ramon: SMEs in need of comprehensive plan - Nation lacks strategy to help sector weather crisis. The Star, p. B3. Yin, R.K. 2009. Case study research – Design and methods, applied social research methods series 4 th Ed., Vol.5. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Yin, R.K. 2011. Qualitative research from start to finish. New York: The Guilford Press. All authors are from: Faculty of Economics and Muamalat Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia 71800 Nilai, N.Sembilan, Malaysia