Let's get real about Singapore's manufacturing sector manpower needs

Younger Singaporeans are shunning manufacturing jobs and automation has its limits. A reset on foreign manpower policies can help ease the crunch.

- Kok Ping Soon

Watson EP, a precision engineering firm, has been manufacturing professional audio, hygiene and plastic products in Singapore since 1977. It has about 70 employees. By expanding to China and Vietnam with affiliated companies, it has enhanced its capacity to provide vertically integrated manufacturing services across diverse market segments.

The company has embraced technology and innovation since the 1990s. But some tasks are still dependent on humans. For instance, the quality inspection process for some of the specialized products requires careful calibration of the right focal length and lighting conditions. Investments in highly customized automation machinery are not viable.

Achieving Singapore's target of 2 per cent to 3 per cent economic growth annually with near-zero labour force growth requires significant productivity gains.

Nowhere is this push for productivity more ingrained than in manufacturing. Multinational firms with manufacturing bases in Singapore have highly advanced plants, with as much as 90 per cent of newly built shop floors fully automated, driven by advanced robots and machines.

But as with Watson EP, many say technology has not eliminated the need for manpower.

Humans are still required to operate complex machinery, manage quality control and perform system maintenance.

Manufacturers undergoing process and digital transformation often require additional manpower to support their transition.

These manpower challenges faced by manufacturing firms have surfaced through focus group discussions, conducted by the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) and the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), as part of the Alliance for Action (AfA) on Business Competitiveness, which ran over a nine-month period and concluded on Nov 1.