KXEX 2165

Moral and Ethnics of Engineering

Profession
Mini Project
Session 2015/2016

ABBAS ROSEDI KEM130001

CHIA YI MENG KEM130013
HO KYE WENN KEM130021

Introduction to One Village One Product Concept

One Village One Product concept is needed to provide assistance to the local entrepreneurs in
business development. The concept is also to encourage local residents fully utilise their resources.
This concept was first started in 1961 in Japan ,where residents in tiny village began to produce
agriculture-based products and it was then evolved to the second stage which that targeted on the
development of human resource and the improvement of living quality. While in Malaysia, OVOP
was started in the year of 1992 that focused on the development of the culture which was then
changed to an even broader global business-oriented concept that can benefit the residents.
Therefore this proposal is written to help the government to implement this concept sustainably
from 3 aspects, which are social, economics and environment.
Objectives:
a) To help the local communities to utilise their resources effectively for a better living quality.
b) Improve the development of the local districts or village with the conservation and preservation
of the environment.
c) To generate earning opportunities and expand the business of the local communities.
Social sustainability :
Social sustainability is the ability of a social system such as the country or village to function at a
defined level of social well-being indefinitely to optimize the quality of life for those residents and
youth generation. In order to achieve social sustainability, equal opportunities and outcomes to
every residents is an utmost important criteria. This is to ensure that every residents have the same
chances and opportunities to improve themselves in several aspects such as knowledge of farming,
marketing. They could also gain and improve their soft skills in which they are able to communicate
with different kinds of people especially those buyers. These well-educated residents will remain
in the districts or village and these precious knowledge will be inherited by the future generation.
As time passed, this OVOP programme can be continued and succeed in the future. Training
programme such as workshop that emphasize on the competency of local communities in producing
their products. This workshop will also play an important role in stimulating the generation of
creative and innovative idea to enhance the products in terms of quality, appearance or design.
Besides that, the training for the maintenance of the machinery will be provided since there are
products that require machinery prior to production such as oil palm products or keropok.
Workshops that are aiming for self-development, soft skill, business and marketing knowledge,
entrepreneurship will be held.
Monitoring aspects :
The trainers of the workshop programme will remain in the districts so that the local communities
have unlimited access to the trainer, and the trainer can always monitor the movement of OVOP
programme The area OVOP officers and their member will be fully supervising the OVOP
movement in their districts or village. Survey will be conducted to research on the effectiveness of
the workshop to improve the quality of the workshops. The minister will conduct a monitoring
exercise as to get hands on the current status of the project. Regular meeting will be held
periodically between the leaders of the local communities and the officer or secretariat of OVOP
programme to voice out any issues or difficulties that encountered by the local communities as well
as the exchange of experiences or opinions of their business. In addition, the OVOP officers will
also update some latest information continuously such as the current condition of the economics in
the world or any governments policies so as to assist them in expanding their business up to global
level.

Environmental sustainability
On the other hand, environmental sustainability is also a very important aspect in helping the OVOP
concept to be implemented sustainably. It is defined as responsible interaction with the environment
to avoid depletion or degradation of natural resources and allow for long-term environmental
quality. The practice of environmental sustainability is to ensure that the needs of todays
generation are met while at the same time the ability of future generation to meet their needs is not
jeopardized. Since this is an OVOP concept, the products resources will certainly originate from
the village itself. Thus, the local communities have to wisely harvest the resources so as to
maximize the production without creating negative impact such as soil degradation, greenhouse
effect, air and water pollutions or even resource depletion so as to preserve the green environment
and the natural resources can still be harvested in a long-term plan. As an example, sustainable
agriculture is one of the farming techniques to achieve environmental sustainability. All of us know
that the industrial agriculture could greatly increase the production of food at affordable prices.
However, it can be detrimental to the environment if this method is beyond control. High usage of
chemical fertilizers, pesticides and water resources would deplete and cause bad effect to the soil.
Excessive chemicals run off into rivers would cause water pollution while soil quality would drop
gradually when growing single crop year after year. Thus, with sustainable agriculture, farmers
could minimize the usage of water and lower the dependence of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Higher quality can also be achieved by using the rotate crop planting method.
Monitoring method
A special supervisor team has to be formed to monitor and carry out supervision on the quality of
the environment from time to time. They will have to take samples periodically from the
surrounding such as soil, air and water to be tested for contamination so as to ensure that high
quality green environment in unaffected from the OVOP programme. All the results and data are
recorded and kept so that any incident such as pollution of air or water can be identified as soon as
possible before it continues to become more serious. In addition, voluntary codes and schemes are
to be used to help establish systems for measuring, managing and monitoring potential impact on
environment and local ecosystems. Every entrepreneur in the local communities is encouraged to
employ specialists or upskilling existing personnel to undertake sampling, measurement and
calculations of environmental indicators for monitoring, remediation and mitigation activities.
Economic sustainability
While for economic sustainability, it is defined as the use of various strategies for employing the
existing resources optimally so that a responsible and beneficial balance can be achieved over the
longer term. In the context of OVOP programme, economic sustainability involves using the natural
resources of the village efficiently and wisely with the initial financial aid from government in
order to allow it to continue functioning profitability over time. Government organizations such as
MARA (Majlis Amanah Rakyat), Institusi Keusahawanan Negara (IKN), Standard and Industrial
Research Institute of Malaysia (SIRIM) and many other organizations are readily to help the local
communities either in technological aid professional consultation or even financial aid so that
the residents are able to set up and start their business. After a certain period of time, the local
product has been improved in terms of creativity, innovative, appearance, quality so that it achieves
higher competency to compete with other products in the market. Their local product is able to be
exported to overseas for sale and thus, increasing the profit and income of the local communities.
With this profit as new capital, the local communities are able to sustain their business by
themselves with their own products and effort and this business is then able to be continued from

generations to generations. As an example, we use rubber plantations as a villages natural

resources. At early stage, the residents will carry out rubber tapping to obtain latex as primary
product to be sent to outside for further process. And now, with the help of government, factories
are built within the village they start to produce secondary and tertiary products such as gloves,
syringes, tyres and others. Besides increasing the whole villages income, new job opportunities
are also be available to the whole residents there. They are able to sustain their business themselves
over a long-term period.
Monitoring method
Those quantifiable aspects such as inflation rate, employment rate and currency exchange rate have
to be paid attention of from time to time. They are the indicators for the economic sustainability
performance. Officers of OVOP programme could have meeting with the leaders periodically to
bring in some updates of the market trend in the world. Prices of their products will then have
changes accordingly to suit the market and reduce loss or increase income. Human resources or
workforce has to be monitored from time to time so as to ensure sufficient human resources to meet
the need when expanding the business to global level.
Conclusion:
One Village One Products is indeed a good and wise policy that has to be implement in Malaysia.
It benefits the local communities not only by generating earning and job opportunities but it also
intellects the local communities and getting themselves into running their own business with their
resources. This is crucial because this will make our local communities to be proud with our local
products and reduce the reliance on the export products. Moreover, this concept is able to draw
attention from low-income districts as they are unable to attract especially high-technology
industries. This concept encourage to use their local resources to produce high value-added
products, which are then promote to the local or global market. With this proposal, we are able to
achieve a success if we are able to implement this concept in 3 aspects sustainably, which are social,
environmental and economics.