In our latest Webinar Series titled Robotics & Automation – The Way Forward, we hosted Dr Yeong Che Fai, Chairman of DF Automation & Robotics, to share his thoughts on the global robotics industry as well as the adoption in our local market. Dr Yeong graduated with a PhD in Bioengineering from Imperial College London and is currently serving as an Associate Professor at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia where he received both his bachelor and master’s degree.

The benefits of adopting automation and robotics in a manufacturing facility can reduce operating costs like electricity with robots functioning in a dark environment to enable lights-out manufacturing which will further increase the ESG rating of the company. With a well calibrated robotic system, production yield rates will see significant improvement with the elimination of human error which is often the problem in a traditional manufacturing environment where a company has to ride through a bumpy and lengthy gestation period when it takes on a new manufacturing project or new customer. This will in turn reduce wastage and money spent on waste processing which is becoming more important with the growing emphasis of ESG by MNC customers and the investing community.

Adoption in Malaysia is still low due to the lack of awareness and resistance of existing workers who view robots as a threat to their jobs. While job loss in the short term is inevitable, the adoption of automation will create higher-value jobs in the longer term which is one of the key ingredients towards a high-income nation.

When asked about solutions to improve the awareness of the local robotics industry, Dr Yeong emphasised a lot on having a “good ecosystem”. Aside from providing passive initiatives such as grants and monetary incentives, the Malaysian government should strive to bring up the first success story of a local robotics company and showcase it to the world. This will create the ecosystem and the precedence for further start-ups to follow suit, as evident by a small city in Denmark, Odense which is well known for its robotics despite having a population of only 200,000.

Source: Kenanga Research - 27 Oct 2021