Prudence urged for 4.0 shift
Small and medium manufacturers have been encouraged to take inventory of their strengths before upgrading production technology to embrace the government’s Industry 4.0 scheme.
The push for Industry 4.0 is good for industrial development but a majority of small and medium-sized producers that are suppliers to big companies are not ready to comply with the new manufacturing standards, said Sanchai Noombunnam, deputy managing director of UBM Asia Thailand Co, a machinery fair organiser. Most of the suppliers are excited about the Industry 4.0 but they do not really understand it.
“With the advent of Industry 4.0, they should not be in a rush to buy new, advanced manufacturing technology because it may not suit their capabilities and factories, making them unnecessarily waste a lot of money,” said Mr Sanchai.
The world is experiencing a major upheaval brought on by the fourth industrial revolution, and Thailand cannot help but embrace major changes on all fronts, he said. This has led the Thai government to impose the Thailand 4.0 scheme, with Industry 4.0 being a part of it.
According to the global consulting firm McKinsey, Industry 4.0 is defined as the digitisation of the manufacturing sector, driven by four disruptions.
First is the astonishing rise in data volumes, computational power and connectivity, especially new low-power widearea networks.
Second is the emergence of analytics and business-intelligence capabilities.
The third disruption is new forms of human-machine interaction such as touch interfaces and augmented-reality systems.
The last point pertains to improvements in transferring digital instructions to the physical world, such as advanced robotics and 3-D printing.
Mr Sanchai said globally, Industry 4.0 is still in its infancy. For Thailand, it will take time for every player in the whole supply chain to adjust themselves to embrace it.
“So, small and medium-sized suppliers should move step-by-step to bring in new technology. Moreover, they should train their staff to operate advanced machines. A smart factory needs smart people to run it,” he said.
UBM Asia, the organiser of Intermach 2017 at Bitec from May 17-20, said several small and medium-sized suppliers who do not understood the concept of Industry 4.0 have temporarily delayed their purchases of new machines.
They are also confused about future changes, especially in the automobile industry, which is increasingly being geared toward the development of electric vehicles, entailing big changes for the entire supply chain in Thailand.
“In my view, the Thai auto industry will gradually move to embrace the development of electric vehicles as the country needs to have the infrastructure to support [this segment], including batteries, service centres, auto parts and charging stations,” said Mr Sanchai.
Before entering the era of electric vehicles, he said many automakers will go for hybrid cars first, so auto parts suppliers can enhance their capacities to serve this development first.
He suggested that Thai suppliers establish factories to produce basic parts in neighbouring countries as this will help transfer production knowledge to their partners.