One of the buzzwords in the manufacturing sector is “Industry 4.0”. NTUC's Electronics and Precision and Machinery Engineering (EPME) Cluster Supervising Lead Melvin Yong broadly described it as a “lights out production” that can function independently without human supervision.
According to a report by Forbes in June 2017, smart factories have the potential to increase overall productivity seven times and add over US$500 billion in value to the global economy by 2022.
While economic data continues to signal growth in the EPME sectors, Mr Yong cautioned that the growth is not uniform across the board and is likely to favour technology-forward companies. However, employers need to find a suitable pace of development.
He explained: “If the companies don’t change, they cannot survive because their products cannot compete with others, but you also cannot expect an Industry 2.0 company to jump on artificial intelligence. How is the workforce going to make the leap?”
Transformation Journey
Contributing 20 per cent of the gross domestic product and 14 per cent of total employment in 2016, the manufacturing sector is a key pillar of Singapore’s economy. To ensure its continued competitiveness, the Government has invested $3.2 billion into advanced manufacturing and engineering under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2020 plan.
The launch of the Energy & Chemicals Industry Transformation Map (ITM) on 21 October 2017 is the third in the series of five ITMs being rolled out for the manufacturing cluster. It joins the existing precision engineering and electronics ITMs.
Two more – aerospace, and marine and offshore – will be launched later this year.
Providing Training
To help workers transit to high-tech jobs, Mr Yong said training is a must, and cited NTUC's EPME Cluster as an example.
Highlighting the inaugural EPME Month where memoranda of understanding are inked with institutions and companies, he shared: “Our job is to create the courses for people to upskill and we can’t do so in a vacuum. We have been getting inputs from the industry on the skillsets they need from the workers and working with institutes of higher learning to design the courses.”
“Workers often ask, ‘train what?’ followed by 'train for what?'. We need to answer them in order to encourage our workers to go for training.
"Without new skills, they will become obsolete very fast. If you know how to operate a robot that can do the job of five people, then your value goes up and you can expect better pay,” said Mr Yong.
Small- and medium-sized enterprises can tap on the following to overcome resource constraints:
