American Journal of Industrial and Business Management, 2013, 3, 601-609 Published Online November 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ajibm) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ajibm.2013.37070 Open Access AJIBM 601 Overview of Malaysian Modularity Manufacturing Practices Noor Raihani Binti Zainol 1 , Abdullah Al-Mamun 2* , P. Yukthamarani Permarupan 1 1 Faculty of Entrepreneurship and Management, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Kota Bharu, Malaysia; 2 Faculty of Entrepreneurship and Management, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Kota Bharu, Malaysia. Email: * abdullah.a@umk.edu.my Received September 10 th , 2103; revised October 10 th , 2013; accepted October 15 th , 2013 Copyright © 2013 Noor Raihani Binti Zainol et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Modules and modularity have been popular concepts in operations research instead of products used in Malaysia. In the latest development, Modularity is very important in product design of manufacturing considerations for efficient as- sembly and complexity to make it better and fasten the process and products. The paper present is a study on overview of modularity products and manufacturing practices in Malaysia such as Traditional Malay House, fordable chair and maintaining services. The process of modularization makes the functional independence as the goal of good design. For the best marketing and end user, industry using modularization process or products leads to creation of product families and uniformity. To make the process of modularity successful, the industry has to ensure that modularity should main- tain independence between components and processes in different modules and interchangeability between modules. This paper discusses the modules and modularity which are applied among the manufacturing in the Malaysia in the context of physical products and services. Keywords: Modules; Modularity; Manufacturing; Interchangeability 1. Introduction In the Malaysian market, most of the consumer products have methods of operation that are similar to function, such as a electric motor to rotate the blade of a blender, extractor and beater of a mixer but not surprisingly, ini- tially they are designed distinctly different from the oth- ers products. Thus, modularity is considered as one of the best design concepts as it promotes faster and better de- signing process, functional independence and physical similarities, which makes the concept of modularity drive better platform development [1]. The researcher applied the modularity approach which makes it easy to design platform for multi-family product, consisting of flour mixer, electric blender and juice extractor, which can be shared among products [2]. Furthermore, the modularity approaches were used in many home appliances which are familiar with the con- sumer. The maintainability of a domestic product such as an electric coffee maker was applied to designing modu- larity which can identify its functional components and the interactions between the components [3]. The service mode of the product was determined so as to ascertain the level of service difficulty faced by the user. Guide- lines in design for maintenance were applied during mo- difications to the existing design, focusing on three com- ponents in the main module of the product consisting of the cover of the base, the spraying unit and the cover of the strainer aperture [4]. The design has certainly enhanced the product’s maintainability as well as reliability. In this way, the enhancement to product maintenance starts with a clear understanding of the interface among the product modules, which enables identification of functions, com- ponents and operation of the product [5]. Few authors discussed the relationship between design for modularity and maintenance in order to extend product life [1]. Modularization is also known as an engineering approach to simplifying component or product configuration as functional independence demands. This loose interaction characteristic makes the maintenance process easier, es- pecially in term of maintenance time in an example of rear motorcycle brake system. Moreover, development in the construction industry * Corresponding author.