KUALA LUMPUR: The government should consider increasing the Industry Digitalisation Transformation Scheme (IDTS) fund size to RM5 billion from the current RM1 billion in Budget 2025 to support and encourage domestic industries to adopt Industry 4.0 (IR4) technologies.
Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) president Tan Sri Soh Thian Lai said the proposed higher allocation would aid industries, particularly SMEs that are still struggling to adopt IR4 in their manufacturing operations.
“Currently, IDTS is only RM1 billion and under the Madani framework, there is a RM2 billion fund size. We have about 100,00 manufacturing companies in Malaysia and, as such, we need to increase the fund size to RM5 billion,“ Soh said at the FMM Industry 4.0 Conference 2024 here today.
He said 95% to 98% of domestic companies are micro and small and medium enterprises and, therefore, it is important to restructure the country’s economy to encourage more medium-sized companies to grow into larger ones. This will make smart manufacturing and automation more feasible.
“We have no time to waste. We need to adopt smart manufacturing immediately because our neighbouring competitors are aggressively embracing this transformation,“ Soh said.
Touching on the New Industrial Master Plan 2030 (NIMP 2030), Soh said FMM views the policy as the key to building Malaysia’s industrial capacity and resilience for the long term.
He added that under NIMP 2030, FMM will be partnering with 29 companies to create a strong technology ecosystem to support the government’s initiative to transform 3,000 companies into smart factories.
“Based on 3,000 companies each spending about RM500,000, the total investment required would be approximately RM1.5 billion. We need to bring in more system integrators who can offer competitive pricing in terms of transforming these companies into smart factories,“ Soh said when asked about the costs needed for IR4 adoption.
FMM vice-president Jacob Lee Chor Kok said NIMP 2030 lays out a clear course for Malaysia over the next seven years until 2030 to keep the country’s manufacturing sector and related services competitive on a global level.
“The master plan is geared towards moving Malaysia’s manufacturing sector up the value chain to more high-technology, value-added and complex products and develop the national technological capabilities which would be instrumental in support the high-technology manufacturing economy,“ he added.
