The paper covers a research in the knowledge management area for automotive industries. A preliminary study on the knowledge management was conducted in the local automotive companies for obtaining an initial overview of the practice of knowledge management in the Malaysian automotive industry. The 72 managers and engineers from six automotive companies in Malaysia were the respondents for this study. The data were interpreted on the basis of weighted scores for each parameter. The final conclusions then were prepared on the basis of a knowledge management index (KMI). The interpretation of data reveals that the knowledge management index (KMI) in the three knowledge management aspects of (i) information technology, (ii) knowledge acquisition, and (iii) understanding and commitment were the highest while the knowledge management index (KMI) for the two other aspects of knowledge management aspects of (i) mechanism of assessment and (ii) acknowledgement were the lowest among the eleven considered aspects. From this data interpretation, it can be concluded that the practice of knowledge management in the Malaysian automotive industry was still in the early stage and need to be improved in order to guarantee the competitive success in the competitive world today.

The application of mathematical models of rainfall is crucial in order to have a better understanding in terms of rainfall characteristics. The rainfall models have been used widely to improve water management, to construct hydrological structures and as an input in climatological studies. In this study, the gamma distribution is used to fit the marginals of monthly rainfall data. The parameters of the gamma distribution, shape and scale, are estimated using the maximum likelihood estimation method. Then, the sum of monthly rainfall amounts is modelled using the McKay distribution for independent gamma variables. To illustrate the independent example, rainfall data is used between the months in monsoon season for Kuantan station. The fit between the observed and generated rainfall data is assessed using Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness of fit test. The results show that the McKay distribution is suitable to model the sum of monthly rainfall amounts for two independent gamma variables. The model is also useful for generating synthetic rainfall amounts for independent months in simulation studies.

In this study, a steady stagnation point flow due to a permeable shrinking sheet with the slip effects is investigated. Employing similarity transformations, the governing boundary layer equations are transformed into the nonlinear ordinary differential equations. The transformed equations are figured out numerically using the shooting method. Results show that dual solutions for velocity and temperature distribution exist for a certain range of the shrinking parameter. The results also indicate that the skin friction coefficient and the local Nusselt number increase for the upper branch solution as the suction parameter increases. Meanwhile, for the lower branch solution, the skin friction coefficient decreases and the local Nusselt number increases as the suction parameter increases. It is also found that the velocity slip and suction process delay the boundary layer separation whereas the temperature slip does not affect the boundary layer separation.