When electronics company Omron pioneered the world’s first unmanned railway station system in Japan in 1967, featuring ticket vending machines, commuter pass punchers and automated ticket gates, its aim was to address a social need through innovation and automation.
“When SSG introduced the SkillsFuture Queen Bee initiative to us, it was a ‘no brainer’ for us to come on board. The programme’s purpose and expected outcomes fully align with what Omron wants to do,” says Mr Lieu Yew Fatt, managing director of Omron. Participants will be guided to set up and plan paths and tasks for mobile robots, design a human machine interface and code robot motion. They also learn to read and write RFID tags for tracking components.
Mr Derek Chan, owner of Automatic Controls and Instrumentation, says that the ongoing manpower crunch has spurred interest in the use of new automation technologies to improve productivity and reduce reliance on manpower. The company specialises in automation machinery manufacturing. “AS AN SME, WE ARE LIMITED IN TECHNOLOGY. OUR KNOWLEDGE IS BASED ON WHAT WE HAD LEARNT IN THE PAST AND IT IS IMPORTANT THAT WE ACQUIRE NEW KNOWLEDGE ALONG THE WAY.”To mitigate the shortage of new workers, Mr Cheng says that the company empowers its current workforce with new skills required to operate smart tools and digital systems.
Mr Cheng shares that an initial concern the organisation had was motivating employees to attend the training programmes. “We got to learn more on how a mobile robot works and programme its movement and tasks using different types of software. Training provided on hardware and software integration greatly helped us to minimise the risk of failure and enable us to provide better solutions to our customers,” Mr Yong says.
During the training course, Mr Yew learnt to use the ThingWorx Foundation, an industrial leading IoT platform, to create a scalable dashboard to interface with smart sensors for tracking equipment and process stratus in a factory.