Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional Berhad (PROTON), the main automobile company in Malaysia, was incorporated in 1983 to manufacture, assemble and sell motor vehicles and related products. Proton has produced its first Malaysia car, the Proton Saga model in year 1985 by then Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, the person who had coined the idea of national car. The establishment of national car in nearly three decades ago needs to be re-examined by Malaysian public as a major customer, the sustainability of the car in the market. Proton Holdings Berhad provides cars for Malaysian even operates in at least 26 countries of which the majority are in Asia. In Malaysia alone, Proton has sold over 3,500,000 cars between 1985 and 2013. The United Kingdom is by far the company's most successful export market in terms of cumulative sales volume, and at one point Proton set the record for Fastest Selling Make of New Car Ever to Enter the United Kingdom. For the record in 1992, the Saga was ranked among the Top 20 best-selling cars in the U.K., outselling its primary competitors from Hyundai and SEAT. Besides that, Proton Holdings Berhad has joint ventures with four different international automobile company which are Mitsubishi, French automobile manufacturer, Citroen, China Youngman Automobile Group and Honda Motor Company to produce their cars in order to make sure that their cars are high quality that can give the satisfaction to the customer.According to the Proton history of 30 years ago, the performance of Proton is not encouraging either. There are a lot of problem facing onto the Proton management. That was happened after Proton has been taken by DRB-HICOM in 2012. In terms of management, Proton also does not have a strong board to determining the future direction of the company. The sales of company are going down from RM194.88 million in FY2013 to RM88.25 million in FY2014. These factor effect by the product quality of Proton cars. Product quality and customer value are important to the achievement of competitive advantage and customer satisfaction. It also pair with the increasing complexities of the need and expectation of customers. Nowadays, most customers prefer good service to lower prices. Thinking about all the situations where customers are prepared to pay a little more to get a better or more efficient service. Companies and organizations that provide these added service benefits are likely to be the winners. Customers are requiring and demanding better services and the goal of all automobile companies is to make customer feel special by improving service quality which will lead to greater customer loyalty. Others, it will have a positive impact on customer satisfaction. According to Ahmed et al (2010), quality is the overall experience which a customer perceives through interacting a product and services. Service quality has been demonstrated as a form of attitude, related but no equivalent to satisfaction that results from the comparison of expectations with performance (Ahmed et al 2010). Service quality has also defined by Zeithaml and Britner (2008) as a focused evaluation that reflects the customers perceptions of specific dimensions of quality: reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangible. Service quality is the customer perception of how well a service meets or exceeds their expectations (Agyapong 2010). Furthermore, service quality is commonly noted as critical prerequisite and determinants of competitiveness for creating and sustaining customer relationship. Other authors like Lewis and Mitchell (1990), Dotchin and Oakland (1994), and Asubonteng et al (1996), define service quality as the extent to which a service meets customer needs and expectations.Mostly people are not recomended to buy Proton cars because Proton product quality is not as good as import cars and the price of Proton cars is not comparable to the quality of the product. In short, the quality of Proton service is bad in terms of technology, design, functions and so on. One of the Proton issues for a long time is Proton had been argued for example is its function problems. The proton buyers tend to address dissatisfied with it and complains about the unreliable of Proton as well as do not support the Proton cars continuously. So, they need to improve their technology skill and service to gain back the customers confidence. Nowadays, there are a various choice of cars available in the Malaysia market. Proton is facing many challenges and competition in automobile industry. In order to survive and maintain the popularity of local cars amongst local people, Proton needed to improve their product quality and change the negative perception of the people about Proton cars services. It is indeed challenging, to say the least, to improve quality in the market given the ever-changing expectations and quality perception among car buyers today. As such, the key to improving quality in the market is to understand the needs and perceptions of our customer.According to article 6th April 2015, Proton is on par with others premium cars such as BMW is absolutely false. Proton received strong opposition in social media such as facebook and blogs. Proton got a problems with low quality service and low customer satisfaction. Many people comments that Proton actually is on far with others premium cars. Proton uses the same components or equipments as used in car imports in terms of safety requirement. This is the way how Proton can raise the price so that it is parallel with the price of imported cars, for example is Proton Iriz. Proton Iriz have the latest safety features and stuff like the latest creature comforts such as internet and navigation. In addition, it is also wise to know that every other competitior of Proton. But, in term of quality Proton Iriz are not camparable like other luxury cars. Customer mostly prefer high quality rather than the just offer a product quality. Product quality is very important to get a positive feedback from customers. We may conclude that Proton cars have lack of its product quality on its brand heritage though it can be said that they do admitted that Proton cars still do have a certain quality. They also believe that high quality cars have good safety systems, comfortable and help them save unnecessary repairing cost.Customer value can be defined as the customers overall assessment of the utility of a product based on the perception of what is received and what is given. According to Zeinthaml (1998), customer value provided the evidence supporting an influential role of value in consumers purchase decision making. Dodds et al (1991) conceptualized perceived value as tradeoffs between perceived quality and perceived psychological as well as monetary sacrifice. However, the mean ends model provided by Zeithaml (1988), perceived value is a direct antecedent of a purchase decision and a direct consequence of perceived service quality. Furthermore, based on customers value hierarchy model Woodruff (1997), customer value was viewed as a hierarchically structured construct at levels of consumption goals, consequences and attributes. In addition a study based on economic value and consumer behaviour theories by Jayanti and Ghosh (1996) argues that perceived value as a direct consequence of perceived quality as well as of price-based transaction and acquisition utilities. Moreover, customer value is a super ordinate goal and customer loyalty is a subordinate goal (Sirdeshmukh, Singh and Sabol 2002). Lastly, Chang and Wildt (1994) have concluded that customer-perceived value has been found to be a major contributor to purchase intention. High customer value is a one primary motivation for customer patronage. Proton gives a best customer value. They really care about their customers such as they give a good customer service, performance and safety of the car, after sales service, beautiful design with fuel saver and so on. But, they mostly have a bad impression on customer value. Proton needs more desirable models like the Persona, which has helped in reviving sales, and would have to maintain its recent improvements in quality as that would have a strong bearing on its acceptance level. Proton's Campro engine, which is the main staple of its product line, is hardly cutting-edge given today's technology. Proton also lacks an engine or platform to expand into the SUV and MPV markets, or the 2.0-litre and above segments. Proton may need to collaborate with a foreign partner much in the way BMW and PSA Peugeot-Citroen are working together to develop new engines and technologies. In the longer term, many of the green engine technologies that are emerging as a result of rising fuel prices and global warming would dictate the direction of automotive development, and these are beyond Proton's capabilities. It is of some comfort, therefore, to learn that the Government is still willing to consider a strong strategic foreign partner in the future.If i was appointed as the Director Operation in the light of industrys best operation practices, the practice that i would change are based on 3 factors, Professionalism, Transparency and Customer Value. Though most of the share of Proton car is held by the Government of Malaysia, it is not a charitable organization. To fulfill its mission and the needs of the others shareholders, as a "Director Operations", i need to be professional in my work. Proton car was in a good position and gradually became market leader of the Malaysian car industry after launching the venture in 1983. For continuing the success it made acquisition of Lotus and MV Agusta Corporation. But Proton market share decreased from 60% to 30% in 2015. For recovering this, i need to took some strategy that was fruitful for them and again started to capture market share. For example. Based on profesionalism, the practice that i want to change is in term of product quality. As we know, the consumers see Proton product quality is so bad. So, i need to change the Proton product quality first in order to change the people perception. This includes the body parts, technology, and engine. For body parts i would like to recommend to proton to use a high quality of raw material as a body part of cars. That is because, the steel that Proton used currently are in very poor quality and its might dangerous to the consumers safety. For example, when the Proton car and BMW was excident, the Proton cars part of body will be more in damage compare to BMW. This also automatically use a lot of cost to change the whole of damage parts. Next, Proton should consider the important of new innovations in the car design. The company needs to look at the continuously innovative design of Japanese Honda and Korean Hyundai creations. This is because, the new generation prefer car that looks more futuristic, hence Proton can try to design cars using that team as a guild line. Besides that they could also come out with better looking interiors as customers nowadays prefer new looks than the old traditional interior style. In a nut shell, Proton needed to improve their product quality and change the negative perception of the people about Proton cars services.Proton have a problems with the transparent view in handling harsh reality of operating in challenging environment. There is a criticism about Proton where Proton are fear for their transparent view for future business plan. Proton has been rather quiet in sharing national-interest information in media. Although, the fund managers and analysts who tracked DRBs stock also silently complained that it has not transparent enough in sharing Proton performance and plans. Based on the transparency, Proton must not be quiet in sharing national-interest information. Proton must brave in order to show to society that Proton is good in facing the problems. Proton must come out to impress to media about Proton performance and 5-years future plan like Perodua do. They need to overcome the criticism from media according to the challenging environment nowadays. This might be change the people perceptions about Proton cars. Proton can makes Perodua as a helathy competitor where they brave in facing the hashy reality of operationg challenging. In addition, base on Proton customer value, there is several practice that i want to change. Customer value can be defined as the customers overall assessment of the utility of a product based on the perception of what is received and what is given. What Proton gives to their consumers currently will create the customer loyalty. Besides that, customer loyalty will retain the Proton sales. So, Proton should change their customer value such as in terms of quality, offer best after sales service and longer the warrany of the cars. If the quality of cars is not good, so, the customer will be dissatisfied. However, Proton also need to create a best benefits for the Proton cars membership such as offer them a low of rates. This might be suitable for the bad economical situation. So, customer value is important for people perception and to increase or retain the sales of the company. In conclusion, Proton need to improve the quality service step by step and retain the customer value in order to get a best perception in society. Through these, the sales of Proton will also improve and the very important is the name of national cars industy will be rise. Soon Proton is on par with the others premium vehichle brands. Brand image play an important role in brand building, especially in customer dependability. According to Reichheld (quoted in Hsieh and Li, 2001) perceptively state that preferable brand image will lead consumers to conceive a perception of an organizations public relationship practice, which matches the corporate reputation better. Therefore it must be acknowledged that customer loyalty grows fast through approving brand image. Hence there are many customers who are loyal towards Proton brand. This is why Proton is able to continue its sales and still retail at this otomobil industry.