French firm Thales to invest over S$31 million in digital factory in S’pore

SINGAPORE — Over the next five years, French defence electronics firm Thales will be investing more than 20 million euros (S$31.2 million) in its inaugural digital factory in Singapore — the first in Asia outside of its two such facilities in France and Canada. 

The factory will drive innovation and digital solutions for the company and its customers in the aerospace, space, ground transportation, defence and security domains.

One of the tools that will be developed by the team of experts here is a cloud-based web application that will allow maintenance teams in industries such as transportation and aviation — including those from its client, rail operator SMRT — to troubleshoot problems easily, and more quickly.

Mr Olivier Flous, Thales’ Head of Digital Transformation and Digital Factory, said that the application, called Teach-r, will allow these maintenance teams to interact and get instructions from experts who are not on the ground.

'(The app) will help with the maintenance of the signalling systems for the (SMRT's) North-South and East-West lines through digital tools," said Mr Flous at the launch of the digital factory at 8 Cross Street on Thursday (Nov 29).

Thales provides signalling technologies for North-South and East-West train lines, as well as the revenue collection systems for the North-East and Circle lines. 

At the company's digital factories, teams of eight to 10 people work with end users to deliver “minimum viable products”, which are new solutions developed at a fast rate — typically in a few months — to quickly test its operational and business value.

For instance, 15 minimum viable products have been created by the 220 people in Thales' digital factory in Paris since it was launched in June last year, with each product taking four months to develop.

In addition to Teach-r, the Singapore digital factory is working on three minimum viable products, Mr Flous said.

Up to 30 experts specialising in fields such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, big data and Internet of Things, will be based in the Singapore digital factory by the end of 2019.

These roles include data scientists, software engineers and security experts, who will be recruited locally and abroad. The team could double in size in the next three to five years, said the company.

Thales will also add another 1,300 staff to its workforce here — bringing the total headcount to over 2,000 — when it completes its acquisition of digital security group Gemalto, which is expected to take place in the first quarter of next year.

Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing, who officiated the opening of the digital factory, said it will boost Singapore's overall digital capabilities, which is important for the country's next lap of growth.

"With this lap, we are now part of a worldwide ecosystem of rapid prototyping, rapid innovation and rapid solution-delivering,” Mr Chan said.

“This adds to the overall capacity of the Singapore economy, not just to serve the local business, but regional businesses too."

He added that Thales’ factory will allow Singaporeans to work with digital talents worldwide.

Agreeing, Mr Flous said: "Beyond capitalising on the strong innovation landscape, we also hope to develop and deepen the talent pool of digital specialists in Singapore."