Singapore's role in the fourth industrial revolution

At the crossroads of major sea and air lanes in the heart of a rapidly growing region, Singapore is an important logistics centre for world trade, putting it on the frontline of the next industrial revolution.

Connectivity and the proliferation of smart devices have taken the world of consumers by storm, in Singapore and indeed everywhere. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a parlance used to express how consumer technologies will interconnect to make life better, but the phenomena is not restricted to consumers.

Connected smart devices have begun to dramatically change how factories run, automobiles are maintained and used, and buildings are controlled, creating new industrial processes, services, and functions.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is set to be the driving force behind the fourth great industrial revolution, after the steam engine, mass production, and automation.

Beyond improving operational efficiency, successful companies in the future will use IIoT to capture new growth, boosting revenues by increasing production and creating new hybrid business models, exploiting intelligent technologies to fuel innovation, and transforming their workforce.

By 2020, we expect connected intelligent products to be the largest “user group” of the Internet, with some 24 billion of them speaking to each other¹. Spending on IIoT is estimated to be $20 billion in 2012, and rising to $500 billion by 2020².

We refer to this revolution as Digital Industry 4.0, where technological progress in connectivity, data centres, IT standards, CPU performance, chip miniaturisation, software, and the Internet are combined with connected, always-on data-powered autonomous or smart devices to create intelligent, interconnected systems seamlessly supporting activities along entire value chains.

Imagine a smart factory where machines communicate to products and each other, objects give decision-critical data, and information is processed and distributed in real time.

Digital capabilities are enabling increased automation, tighter integration and accelerating operations. While work may be executed locally, it will increasingly be coordinated and consolidated globally, converting the traditional value chain into an integrated digital value circle, where customer-driven interactions and a collaborative ecosystem of suppliers hasten the pace of development and innovation.

Business models will need to be re-engineered to consider opportunities arising from this digital value circle. Valuable feedback from customers, perhaps obtained through social media, can be taken into consideration during product development to create products they actually want, and the use of simulation and fast manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing can improve time to market.

Manufacturing facilities will need to become even more flexible and agile to support shorter product cycles. Vast streams of data generated from the connected systems will need to be crunched using intelligent analytics to gain insight and provide decision support.

Traditional "metal sheet" products will need to have intelligence and connectivity implanted through embedded solutions to enable interaction with other smart machines. Opportunities to shift from sale of product to sale of the product-as-a-service need to be rationalised, and taken advantage of.

Companies just embarking on Digital Industry 4.0 initiatives will do well to take a leaf from the digital playbook of the public transportation industry, which has leveraged technologies, social media, and mobile communications to more effectively deploy their assets and enhance customer feedback in a bid to improve commuter satisfaction.

The logistics industry also has been early adopters of sophisticated analytics to reduce delivery times and optimise resources across their global networks.

Freight and logistics firms however should not rest on their laurels but should consider how they can add value in this brave new world. Singapore’s capabilities as a leading logistics and transportation hub powers its manufacturing sector.

To achieve high performance, logistics firms must transform alongside their digital industry 4.0 clients, to bring deep expertise beyond traditional transportation and warehousing to support these clients’ closely integrated, flexible manufacturing and real-time inventory needs.

Indeed every firm that supports the manufacturing industry needs to figure out how they fit into the Digital Industry 4.0 paradigm. They must then retool and reposition themselves to deliver the level of service demanded by these forward-looking, digitally enabled industrial high performers, even as the end-customers expect ever more quality, innovation, and cost-competitiveness in products and services.
 

Reference:

1. https://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/si-and-tech-insights/connectivity-has-brought-us-the-digital-industry-40-revolution-3568008/

2. Driving unconventional growth through the Industrial Internet of Things, Accenture, 2014