Byline High Res

I FEATURE
THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
– ARE WE READY?
In recent years, the government has called for the acceleration and adoption of the 4th Industrial Revolution, otherwise
known as 4IR, for local businesses. But what exactly is 4IR and what kind of benefits and impact will it bring? Mr. Girish
Ramachandran, Executive Director of 27 Advisory took some time off his busy schedule to speak to the MABC on this
exciting topic for Malaysia. 27 Advisory is a Business Management Consultancy which also provides consultancy in 4IR. It is
a boutique management consultancy that focuses on strategy, transformation and socio-economic engineering, which helps
organizations create innovative business solutions and implementable strategies that bring sustainable and material impact
on their businesses and the wider community.
Could you tell us what is 4th Industrial Revolution and
how can it benefit businesses and the country?
So we have the first, second and third industrial revolution.
The first is basically the use of steam engines that took over
manual labour, the second is going into manufacturing
where we have mass production and assembly lines. The
third is the digitization of manufacturing such as using the
computer to control the machine and the fourth is about
how the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, virtual reality
(VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) are changing the way
we live and work. For businesses, it is about making it
more efficient, leaner, improve productivity and creating
more skilled jobs to compete better. It is about getting the
information you need to make the right decisions for your
business.
The Prime Minister of Malaysia launched the Industry4WRD
in October 2018 to boost productivity growth, with priority
initially given to the manufacturing sector, with future
plans to extend it to other sectors.
Does the 4th Industrial Revolution serve a particular
business goal outside of improving efficiency?
Businesses need to evolve. 4IR brings other benefits as
well including improved productivity, better flexibility
and agility, increased profitability and improvement in
customer experience. New jobs are also being created
especially to cater for the new millennials.
Many predict that 4IR will cause a polarization of the labour
force, with an increasing share of employment in high and
low wage jobs and a decreasing share of employment in
middle wage jobs.
What are the incentives and funding from the Government
to promote the adoption of 4IR?
Most government incentives are for manufacturers under
Industry4WRD. There is a string of tax incentives for
robotics and factory automation.
MIDF is also giving out soft loans for automation and
modernization while MIDA and SIRIM are providing
automation capital allowance. There are actually a lot of
incentives given by MIDA to the industry.
Not many people know about this incentive Business Loan
Guarantee Scheme (SJPP). It is a RM2 billion fund allocated
for SMEs to invest in automation and modernization.
For the non-manufacturing sectors, the incentives are still
unclear. The government is looking into it now.
6 MABC BYLINE