‘Malaysia needs to develop own roadmap’

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia needs to develop its own national roadmap and framework for the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) to spur collaboration with developed countries in innovation industries.

Prof Dr Holger Kohl, director of corporate management at Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology in Germany, said Malaysia needed to cooperate with advanced countries to adopt the right Industry 4.0 technologies.

Kohl said it was unnecessary to fully adopt Industry 4.0 as in some processes, the use of traditional instruments or automation could be relevant in enhancing productivity and competitiveness.

However, in areas where tailormade individual products were manufactured, then Industry 4.0 or intelligent manufacturing would be relevant, he added.

Kohl said while there were small applications in intelligent manufacturing, full and complete integration of Industry 4.0, particularly in the use of cloud technology to control production, would take time as it was mostly still at the R&D stage.

“Another most important development in Industry 4.0 are devices that allow communication between different objects.”

He said the adoption of Industry 4.0 would also change employment conditions as it would enable more flexible working hours.

Kohl stressed that there was a need for the development of global standards in Industry 4.0, particularly in the areas of Internet of Things, exchange of data and security.

Discussions were ongoing to synchronise different systems globally among science and technology institutes, and research and development players in the United States and Europe, he said.