Companies must persist in transformation efforts, learn from firms that have done it successfully: Heng

SINGAPORE — Even as he acknowledged that the industry transformation journey is neither straightforward nor easy, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat urged companies to persist in their transformation efforts to avoid “hitting a dead end”.

He said there are some sectors — in particular those that are more manpower-intensive — that will be facing more stress, so the Government will need to work closely with the trade associations and unions to help them.

“It is not straightforward, it is not easy, but precisely because it is not easy that we need to devote even more time and effort to doing this (transformation),” Mr Heng said on Monday (Feb 25) during a visit to ST Engineering’s aerospace facility along Airport Road.

He is confident, he added, that "our businesses and our workers have what it takes to make these changes".

“What we must do is to persist, because it is as I said in the Budget: If we do not change then we'll be hitting a dead end and changes later on will be that much harder. So it is far better for us to take the slightly more difficult road today so that we will reach our destination.”

Mr Heng had devoted a significant section of his Budget speech last week on economic transformation and unveiled a slew of programmes to help companies thrive.

On Monday, he called on businesses to look at companies that have been successful in their transformation and to learn from them.

He cited the Aerospace arm of defence and engineering conglomerate ST Engineering as an example of such a company. 

Mr Heng, who went on a tour of the company’s facilities, said: “I spoke to a number of workers. Some of them have been here for decades and they told me how, along the way, we have been upgrading their skills. 

“There's also very good collaboration between ST Engineering and the institutes of higher learning, the universities, polytechnics, ITE (Institute of Technical Education). And there's a range of training programmes done both together with these institutes of higher learning, as well as in-house.”

Mr Jeffrey Lam, 48, deputy president of ST Engineering Aerospace, said that the aerospace sector invests a multi-million-dollar sum on its smart maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) initiatives each year.

He explained that this is for reasons such as an ageing workforce as well as a shortage of labour supply in Singapore.

“We need to invest in technologies that will enable us to automate to be more productive, to have (fewer) workers produce more.”

ST Engineering employs about 22,000 employees worldwide. The aerospace arm has about 9,000 employees, with around 5,500 of them based in Singapore. More than half of these workers are above 45 years old, Mr Lam said.

He believes that workers should be focused on “high value-added work” rather than the “repetitive, mundane and manual type” of labour.

Some examples of digitalisation and automation that were presented on Monday's tour included a robotic repair device, a digital information system and inspection drones.