New FTI chief vows to lead industry forward
CHEN NAMCHAISIRI, the new chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries, yesterday pledged to usher manufacturing into the “Industry 4.0” era.
FTI is one of the country’s three flagship business organisations.
Chen, 60, is president of Asia Fibre Plc, a manufacturer of nylon-6 products.
He holds masters degrees in mechanical and industrial engineering from Stanford University in the US.
“It is my aspiration to see FTI become a principle institution for manufacturing, which contributes over 40 per cent of GDP [gross domestic product] and more than 10 per cent of the labour force, that has dignity and honour, wins the public’s confidence and is dependable for manufacturers,” he said.
His strategy for manufacturing is to enhance industrial competitiveness with efficiency, productivity and innovation; ensure sustainable development through social and environmental responsibility; strengthen manufacturing through clustering; make use of benefits from trade negotiations; develop human resources; and collaborate with the public sector to build supportive factors for manufacturers.
McKinsey & Co, a major management consulting company, has defined Industry 4.0 as the next phase in the digitisation of manufacturing, driven by four disruptions.
They are the astonishing rise in data volumes, computational power and connectivity, especially new low-power wide-area networks; emergence of analytics and business-intelligence capabilities; new forms of human-machine interaction such as touch interfaces and augmented-reality systems; and improvements in transferring digital instructions to the physical world, such as advanced robotics and 3D printing.
