Inaugural Fourth Leap Conference and Publication makes its official launch

Wordlabs Business Network (WBN), a leading regional business platform, held their inaugural Fourth Leap Conference at One World Hotel, Petaling Jaya.

The event also served as the launch of The Fourth Leap Magazine, which was officiated by YB Dr Ong Kian Ming, Deputy Minister, Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI).

The conference series serves to connect the dots between fundamental digital quake of technological change and the opportunities available to businesses – those that can adapt to the disruptive agents of the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Featuring the theme of ‘Clarity Not Confusion Leading Business Direction’, the conference was attended by over 200 guests ranging from C-level executives to local SME’s.

Guests also formed a diverse crowd from various sectors and industries.

Highly recognised speakers and panelists from companies such as Bosch Rexroth, Alibaba Cloud, Monash University, Sydney Cake House, UiTM, FOMCA, MDEC, MITI, InvestKL and more, took to the stage in the form of engaging discussions and enlightening sessions.

Accompanying the conference series was the Fourth Leap Magazine, a publication dedicated towards the fourth industrial revolution.

It’s cover story featured an exclusive interview with Nicholas David, Head of Society and Innovation of the World Economic Forum, who, besides sharing key insights into the changing business ecosystem, also gave his views on the recently launched Industry4WRD National Policy on Industry 4.0.

In his keynote speech, YB Dr Ong Kian Ming spoke on the Fourth IR from the government’s perspective, the 11 components of Industry4WRD, MITI’s role in terms of Industry 4.0. and touched on upcoming programmes and discussions in relation to the recently tabled budget
2019.

“Looking at the budget that was announced by Minister Lim Guan Eng on the 3rd of November, it had many elements of Industry 4.0 wherein he mentioned a readiness assessment provided for companies in the manufacturing sector especially the SME’s so that they can identify what are their shortcomings in terms of Industry 4.0 readiness and ways to scale up.

“We don’t want them to enter a situation whereby they think adopting industry 4.0 means having to spend millions of Ringgit to purchase new machines in order to automate.

“We want them to understand their business and determine what is the best business model in order to adopt aspects of industry 4.0 that are relevant to them in the most cost-effective way.”

The deputy minister also stressed that the private sector may also play a role by coming up with readiness assessment tools and working together with government agencies.

“There are over 900,000 SME’s in Malaysia and over 50,000 of which are in the manufacturing sector.

“Our readiness assessment model will be rolled out for 500 SME’s only, in order to help them to move up the value chain.

“We can’t reach out to 50,000 SME’s, but this is where the private sector could help these other SME’s adopt and understand Industry 4.0 standards.”

Besides the readiness assessment model, a dual training programme will be placed under the Ministry of Human Resources, whereby MITI would coordinate the funding pertaining to Industry 4.0 training processes as well as the grants and automation loans that are to be rolled out by the different agencies.