THE IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING FOR HALAL LOGISTICS INDUSTRY IN MALAYSIA *Khazizul Maulod Bin Pahim, **Sabariah Jemali and ***Syed Jamal Abdul Nasir Syed Mohamad *Malaysia Institute of Transport (MITRANS), Shah Alam Malaysia **Malaysia Institute for Supply Chain Innovation (MISI), Shah Alam Malaysia ***Faculty of Business Management, UiTM, Shah Alam Malaysia Abstract - As a fast expanding business, the Halal industry is now estimated at USD 2.1 trillion. The attention and demand for Halal certified services and products continues to rise throughout the world because Halal is not only for religious obligations, but there is also a rising demand from non- Muslims. Halal is not only concerned about religious requirements such as the right way to slaughter animals and prepare food. Halal products also attract non-Muslim consumers as it also focuses on where the resources and materials of the product come from. Hence, traceability and integrity of the product are part and parcel of a product being labelled Halal. Halal practices do not come to an end when the product has been manufactured as a product could easily lose its Halalness if it gets contaminated during the transportation and storage prior to retailing. Hence, training industry professional is crucial as the lack of professionalism in the transport and logistics process in the supply chain may cast doubts on the Halal status of a product. This study focuses on the level of training that professionals in the third party logistics industry have on Halal standards and what must be done to bridge the gap in training. The current research relies heavily on disclosed and published materials such as logistics firms annual reports, journals, newspapers and business magazines articles, published reports produced by consultants, special studies and reports commissioned by the Malaysian Government for an analysis of the current state of industry. Keywords: 3PL, Halal Logistics, Logistics Training, Training Needs, Halal Industries I. INTRODUCTION Today, the ultimate success of the Halal industry will depend on the management ability to combine the element of the supply chain. The logistics service providers play a serious role in realizing this combination for the Halal logistics [1]. The third party logistics (3PL) involved in the reloading, collection, handling, consolidation, storage, tracking and tracing and controlling the movement and storage of Halal products represent an important and rapid grow of the economy as Halal logistics supply chain is more complicated than traditional logistics operation [1]. All the activities of Halal logistics can be achieved with the proper training to create the awareness for handling the Halal product and services to the 3PL player [2]. This paper tends to answer questions on what is the state of the ‘Halal’ logistics industry in Malaysia and what are the factors that influence the training needs in Halal Logistics in Malaysia. There is no doubt that training plays an important role in order to boost the logistics industry as stated in [3]. It also stressed that one of the strategic thrust in the logistics industry is to ensure and adequate supply of competent workforce to meet the long term requirement of the industry. The main objective of this study is to determine the current state of Halal Logistics industry and identify the factors influence the training needs in Halal Logistics Industries in Malaysia. II. LITERATURE REVIEW A. Halal Industry According to [4], components of Halal industry are (1) food (2) non-food and (3) services as shown in figure 1. Figure 1: Components of Halal Industry (Source: MITI) From Figure 1, HDC has come out with another diagram that can illustrate the element and component in the Halal industry more appropriately [5]. The logistics and shipping are one of the components that is important in order to ensure the products coming to consumer are Halal. According to [6], there are 10 clusters involved in Halal industry. One of the clusters is knowledge-based workers (K-Workers) whereby it functions to sustain K-Workers for the Halal industries. PIHH is cognizant that skilled 2012 IEEE Symposium on Humanities, Science and Engineering Research 978-1-4673-1310-0/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE 1635