Singapore to continue investing in talent to benefit from opportunities in advanced manufacturing
THE government will continue investing in talent development to ensure workers have the skills and expertise to harness new technologies and benefit from the opportunities arising from advanced manufacturing, said Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong on Nov 12.
But, he noted, the government "cannot do this alone - we need businesses to work together with us to ensure that training programmes are relevant to the industry".
Gan was speaking at the unveiling of the revamped and newly-expanded Siemens Advance Manufacturing Transformation Centre (AMTC).
The AMTC was first launched in September 2020 as a three-in-one competence centre that combines the digital enterprise experience centre, the additive manufacturing experience centre, and rental labs.
The centre has broadened its digital enterprise offering to include industrial edge, industrial artificial intelligence and process analytics, beyond manufacturing design consulting and enabling companies to create digital twins of their envisioned advance manufacturing plants.
"Our ambition with AMTC is to help SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) in South-east Asia to explore, innovate and pilot new solutions, and upgrade their capabilities," said Sascha Maennl, acting head of Siemens Digital Industries in Asean.
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"Many SMEs do not have the resources nor facilities for R&D, thus AMTC provides a sandbox for them. It also provides a co-creation platform where partners and Siemens can combine their solutions to enhance a product."
Sesto Robotics for instance, is the first AMTC partner that has co-created an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) with the Siemens team in Singapore. It includes a PC-based application that allows the AMR to travel with free navigation.
Sesto Robotics is a Singaporean company that builds these robots and solutions for material handling processes.
Separately, the expanded facility has an additional 6 training classrooms and an expanded curriculum to help upskill the local and regional digital workforce. The new curriculum includes edge computing, cloud platform, industrial Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D design, virtual/augmented reality, and the smart industry readiness index.
The AMTC ecosystem has grown from 7 to 11 technology partners including 3 government partners, namely JTC, SkillsFuture and Namic, said Thai-Lai Pham, chief executive officer of Siemens Asean and Singapore in his opening speech.
"During these 13 months, together with SkillsFuture, we have also rolled out an additive manufacturing training under the SGUnited mid-career pathways programme. It has since trained close to 70 talents. Among these trainees, about 20 have found re-employment with their new-found skills," he said.
Siemens intends to train around 50 more trainees in the expanded AMTC in 2022.
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