THE INVISIBLE MAN

1.0 BACKGROUND OF THE COMPANY

Murata Electronic (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. (MME) was established in 4 May 1993. It was located

in the Bemban Industrial Park in Batu Gajah, Perak. This company is one of the 52 overseas

subsidiaries of Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd. in Japan including Malaysia, Thailand, Hong

Kong, and India. The managing director of Murata Electronic (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. is Yoshihiro

Tanaka from Japan. There are 7 departments in MME which are administration, production

engineering, business coordination, production, business info system, IPC-business coordination

and IPC-sales. This company plays an important role as a production bases outside Japan. The

roles including to meet the demands South East Asia and entire of the world related to the

electronic components. Currently, MME have 570 workers, 101 contract workers and 8

expatriates. The core business of MME are selling the electrical and electronics components.

Besides that, this company also makes its own components and later import their product to

Japan, Korea and China.

2.0 BACKGROUND OF THE MAIN CHARACTER IN CASE STUDY

The mover in this case is known as Teh Cheng Lee. His age is fifty-five years old. His position at

this company as a software engineering. It is quite important position in the company because

Cheng Lee is one of the member in software engineering team that was so expert in his roles.

The role of software engineers are to be specialize in development of networks, operating

systems, databases and applications. Additional for that, the team should have high fluency in

computer languages and development environments. Some of the software engineers work alone

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but in this company, they work as a team and collaborate with other specialists for the purpose of

deveploment and and to create complex project.

Teh Cheng Lee actually was very expert on this position because he has five years working

experience in this sector. He also has a strong analytical skills where he can solved most of

complex and regular problems by applying a logical thinking to make a decision. Cheng Lee

also a person who give a careful attention to the detail especially for the analyzing data. Besides

that, he also a friendly and a helpful person. Behind his friendly character, he also do not know

how to pleasing with others to succeed and he also believe at hard work principles.

He also became an asset of company because he was a top skilled worker at his company. He

monitors all the production line, know every single incident that happened better than anyone

else in the production engineering department. Cheng Lee have a highly skilled in data electronic

especially for the inspection of the products. He knows all data in the system without the help of

others. So that is why he is one of the most important employee to the company.

Cheng Lee also a part of the team who is develop, test and run computer systems and

application. It means that he know everything about the computer system. He is responsible in

producing the deficiency report and trace the broken items in each production line. He is very

famous among the lower level of workers but not in his department. Lower level of workers are

like him because he was not stingy with a smile and always provide guidance to them regardless

of any age and race.

3.0 PROBLEM STATEMENT IN THE COMPANY

As we know, the key performance indicator (KPI) is very important to every kind of workers

because based on that they will get the recognition in the term of promotion or bonuses. It helps

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organization to have a better understanding on their performance towards the strategic goals and

the objectives. In other word, key performance indicator is able to show a picture of progress

that can be measured and also can evaluate the success whether it reaching the targets or not.

Key performance became an issue for Teh Cheng Lee because chief engineering from Japan

annually not evaluate him fairly. He felt unfair because he know he do his work excellently. He

always got a bad impression and appraisal from year by year by the chief engineering. Cheng

Lee believes that the main reason why he got a poor performance appraisal because his ideas are

always taken by someone else in his team and his efforts are not been seen and appreciated.

Software engineering department are depend on his skill but his efforts were not given any

recognition. He also never received any awards during his career there. His idea mostly about

how to reduce the deficient of product during production and how to improve the quality of

product. It also known as Kaizen system. It is a system that focus on continuous improvement

and involves all workers from the top management to lower level of workers. So everyone

should come out even with small improvement suggestions. So Cheng Lee always gives a good

ideas to improve the performance on that time. However, his name has never been mentioned in

every meeting but those people who steal his idea that is being rewarded.

His motivation to do his job is getting low when the same situation was happened year by year.

Cheng Lee felt frustrated with the company because not appreciate of his hard work, effort and

everything that he did well before. There is no recognition for what he did before and it leads

him to quit from the company. Even as he works with the feeling of dissatisfaction because of

the bias work atmosphere, Cheng Lee tried to think positive and give his best effort to company.

He try to maintain his performance by issued a report on the expected time, always gave a

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brilliant ideas for the improvement in product and production, and also by attending every

meeting even he is on vacation or on his off-day. The purpose is to give a good perception of him

on everyone . So he work again for another year before he lost his temper in the following year.

For the last time, Cheng Lee ask for the increasing in his salary but it is not approved by the

human resource management because of poor performance appraisal. He claimed that the chief

engineer is bias and never liked him. One of the factor why he is dislike by his department is

because he always feels that he is the one who can make a right decision and he was unable to

accept the comments and opinion from others. This is because there is no doubt that Cheng Lee

is the most important person in his department because of his excellent work compare to others.

Besides that, his own team also do not like him because when the manager give instructions to

him, he shows a slow response because he will first look at his team whether they can solved the

problem or not . A few days later when the issue is still not resolved, then Cheng Lee will offer

his ideas and help. Suprisingly, Cheng Lee giving one month notice to quit working. His main

reason is that the companies do not appreciate all his efforts and he will find work elsewhere.

Cheng Lee also feels that he is invisible in his company. He also said to other workers that

something big will happen in about a month now. Everyone thought that he was joking because

he may be disappointed with his condition at that time.

4.0 ENDING

A month later, Cheng Lee left the company. On Monday morning, there was a great shock faced

by the company. The company's system is down. Production of that day was delayed because the

machine will not operate without a system. Losses on that day was estimated more than one

million ringgit because the production and shipment of motherboard that will be exported to

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Japan, China, Korea in the same day are delayed. The problem lasted for 3 days. Immediate

action taken by the company is to give an instructions to its employees to focus on work in

process inside the inventory. Work in process refer to materials that are going through the

production process but yet not considered as a finished product. Therefore, the company does not

have to close its operations on that day because of the issue.

One way to solve the problem is to contact the engineers from Japan because the existing

engineers do not have skill to deal with this kind of situation. The failure in system resolved

three days later and the company can operates as usual. As Cheng Lee is often seen as invisible

when he worked here, so too with the affect that he left when he stopped working here. Company

cannot claim on Cheng Lee because there is no evidence and no trail left that allows him was

indicted for the losses suffered by the company. Follow-up actions after the incident is to contact

Cheng Lee but he did not appear and who is the responsible for the failure of system has not yet

answered until now. There was only rumors that the failure in system was created by Cheng Lee.

They could only guess he hack the system from his house and others are guessing that he had set

the alarm in the system before he left this company. There are many rumors on that time but the

truth is only known by Cheng Lee.

After the incident, the company ordered the chief technician for daily data backup and data are

stored and monitored in a safe place. The company has also introduced a junior technician

program and given an intensive training and allowance including sending them to Japan so that

when any worker is resigns, the company is still able to operate without disrupting the daily

operations. Human resource department also is giving warned by the board of director to give

more attention to any criticism and problems shared by the workers and take an appropriate

action to minimize the level of dissatisfaction among workers.