TECHNICAL SEMINAR REPORT

NAME : KISHORE ANAND A/L POONASEGARA

ID : 1102172015
COURSE NAME : TECHNICAL SEMINAR
COURSE CODE : EVB 4531
LECTURER : DR KRISHNAN & MR NOORSHAHRIL
 SEMINAR REPORT

TECHNICAL TALK ON “THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND

ITS IMPLICATIONS IN BUSINESS”
Organised by the Engineering Education Technical Division, IEM

1.0 Introduction

The purpose and objectives of the seminar was to bring together scholars from across the globe to
understand how transformation of industrial manufacturing through digitalization and exploitation
of potentials of new technologies are applied on new era of businesses. Besides, it is also to
facilitate an understanding of Industry 4.0 concepts, its drivers, enablers, goals and limitations. As
a bachelor degree student, I got to know that there will be some research in future to be done, I
found it was a very enriching experience for me.

Seminar Details
Date : 17th June 2019, Monday
Time : 5.30 pm – 7.30 pm

Venue : Auditorium Tan Sri Prof Chin Fung Kee, Third Floor, Wisma IEM, Petaling Jaya,
Selangor
Speaker : Ir. Dr. Ling Chen Hoe
Speaker Biodata
Ir. Dr. Ling Chen Hoe. He has more than 15 years of experience working with Meiden Malaysia,
a company in the electrical engineering and construction industry in Malaysia since 1990. He is
now the Senior General Manager and Director of the company, with roles for business
Development and Strategic Planning.

Dr. Ling obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne,
Australia in year 1989. He holds a MBA from the University of Lincoln, United Kingdom (2003)
and obtained his Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) in 2016 from SEGi University,
Malaysia. He is also a certified Professional Engineer by the Board of Engineers Malaysia and a
corporate member with the Institution of Engineers Malaysia (IEM). He also serves as a committee
member on the Electrical Engineering Technical Division of IEM.
2.0 Content of the seminar

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution, which took place from the 18th to 19th centuries, was a period during
which predominantly agrarian, rural societies in Europe and America became industrial and urban.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the late 1700s, manufacturing was
often done in people’s homes, using hand tools or basic machines. Industrialization marked a shift
to powered, special-purpose machinery, factories and mass production. The iron and textile
industries, along with the development of the steam engine, played central roles in the Industrial
Revolution, which also saw improved systems of transportation, communication and banking.
While industrialization brought about an increased volume and variety of manufactured goods and
an improved standard of living for some, it also resulted in often grim employment and living
conditions for the poor and working classes.The Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century,
when agricultural societies became more industrialized and urban. The transcontinental railroad,
the cotton gin, electricity and other inventions permanently changed society.

The 4th Industrial Revolution

The Fourth Industrial Revolution heralds a series of social, political, cultural, and economic
upheavals that will unfold over the 21st century. Building on the widespread availability of digital
technologies that were the result of the Third Industrial, or Digital, Revolution, the Fourth
Industrial Revolution will be driven largely by the convergence of digital, biological, and physical
innovations.

The current, 4th revolution, started in the 2000s, takes automation even further and revolves around
cyber-physical production systems. It overlaps largely with the technological advancements
known as Smart Factories, the Industrial Internet of Things, Smart Industry, or Advanced
manufacturing.
Industry 4.0 is a combination of several novel technological advancements:
• Information and communication technology,
• Cyber-physical systems,
• Network communications,
• Big data and cloud computing,
• Modelling, virtualization and simulation,
• improved tools for human-computer interaction and cooperation.

Previous industrial revolutions liberated mankind from animal power and made mass production
possible. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is, however, fundamentally different. It is characterized
by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds,
impacting all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenging ideas and roles that has
been central to humans. The resulting shifts and disruptions mean that we live in a time of great
promise as well as great peril. The world has the potential to connect billions of people to digital
networks, dramatically improve the efficiency of organizations and even manage assets in ways
that can help regenerate the natural environment, potentially undoing the damage of previous
industrial revolutions. The adoption of digital technology has reached a point where we are ready
for another radical change, the digital transformation of the industry or what we call Industry 4.0.

In Industry 4.0, cybernetics is the basis for the optimization of design and production processes,
which allows manufacturing of highly customized, flexible and efficient products. It affects the
entire lifecycle of a product, ensuring its vertical and horizontal integration. The digital integration
of information provides real-time access to the data that are relevant to the business. The fourth
industrial revolution is a new era that gives a quantitative and qualitative leap in the organization
and management of value chains. This new stage of the industry is committed to greater
automation, connectivity and globalization.
Discussions

Ir. Dr. Ling Chen Hoe opened the talk with a brief definition on Industry 4.0, the fourth industrial
revolution which has been called the new buzzword of the manufacturing industry. As the suffix
indicates, this is the 4th wave of distinct industrial advancements, and has thus been titled “The
Fourth Industrial Revolution”. Although the concept is not yet widespread, there is great potential
that it will penetrate and improve many aspects of human life and today’s manufacturing.
However, at the same time it will be accompanied by as many challenges. He then continued by
explaining and showing the world famous news articles which was discussing on the Industry 4.0
and how it impacts the business world. The following are the articles that he explained.

The speaker said that General Electric

is to cut 12,000 jobs in its power
business, 18% of the division's global
workforce. The US industrial group
expects the "painful but necessary" job
losses to help save $1bn next year as
demand for fossil fuel power plants
wanes. GE intends to cut 1,100 jobs
from its UK power business, mainly in
Stafford and Rugby.

Elsewhere, one-third of the firm's

Swiss workforce and one-sixth of
German workers are likely to be hit.
 The speaker said, ever since the
struggling Toys ‘R’ Us filed for
bankruptcy protection in
September 2017, the company has
been in talks to restructure their
USD$6.6 billion (RM27.6 billion)
debt. Over the recent months,
discussions and deals were in
progress but it looks like things
will not be the same for our
favourite childhood store.

According to BBC, the mega toy-store chain has failed to reach a deal to restructure their debt and
as a result, they will be closing or selling all of their 885 stores in the US. It was reported that this
mass closure would cause about 33,000 employees to lose their jobs.

They were already closing down about one fifth of their stores as they tried to recover from their
bankruptcy filing. With the emergence of online platforms like Amazon and eBay, Toys ‘R’ Us
has been incurring debt like crazy and could not recoup those losses.

One of Australia’s largest brick businesses

Brickworks, has announced a joint venture with
West Australian startup Fast Brick Robotics
(FBR) to test the Hadrian X bricklaying machine.
 Next, the speaker explained us the downfall of Kodak
Company that were caused by their unimproved
technologies.
Kodak invented digital photography but they were
afraid to lose their conventional film sales, which
contributed almost 90 percent of their sales at the time.
Their success blinded them that they completely
missed the rise of digital technologies. In the end, the
inevitable happened, they went bankrupt as digital
cameras swamped global photography. Kodak
mismanaged its investment in digital cameras, by
trying to maintain performance of traditional film photography rather than embrace the rising
technology of digital photography.
The lessons from Kodak are, the challenges faced were not unique but Kodak should have
embraced uncertainty and be prepared to be driven in unforeseen directions. Kodak needed to
avoid the attachment of its legacy onto new ventures and base its corporate strategy in response to
its environment, rather than on obsolete business model.

Dr Mahathir said industry

4WRD would facilitate
companies to embrace Industry
4.0 in a systematic and
comprehensive manner, and be
smarter and stronger driven by
people, process and technology.
 The four specific goals announced are:
1. To increase the level of productivity in the
manufacturing industry per person from
RM106,647 by 30%.
2. To elevate the absolute contribution of the
manufacturing sector to the economy from
RM254bil to RM392bil.
3. To strengthen the country’s innovation capacity
and capability as reflected by the improvement in
Global Innovation Index ranking from 35th spot to
top 30 and;
4. To increase the number of high-skilled
workers in the manufacturing sector from 18% to
35%.

Moreover, the speaker explained us about the difference between Automation and AI. Put
simply, AI is machine that is capable of thinking that can perform a task thought to be reserved
for a human mind. Automation is simply a process of completing a task with little to no human
intervention. Basically, automation is not AI.

Finally, he described and explained about the importance and role of Information and
communication technologies in The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Majority of the innovations in
manufacturing are based on ICT. Digitization and the widespread application of ICT allows to
integrate all systems throughout the supply and value chains and enables data aggregation on all
levels. All information is digitized and the corresponding systems inside and across companies are
integrated at all stages of both product creation and use lifecycles. The manufactured smart
products will take on additional roles to its primary purpose: an information container to store
information across the complete supply chain and its life cycle; an agent: the product actively
affects its environment; an observer: the product monitors itself and its environment. For example,
clothing items can monitor how long they have been worn or how often they’ve been washed, to
report back to the manufacturing plant in order to produce a replacement for when needed. The
recent advancements in ICT sector form the basis of Industry 4.0, as the industrial processes have
started to go beyond the simple automation of production.
3.0 Conclusion

In conclusion, I have learned the overview of the underlying technologies, possible benefits and
predicted challenges of Industry 4.0, in the context of the Information Society. Although the
concept of Industry 4.0 is not yet widespread, it has potential to penetrate and improve many
aspects of human life. Starting from changes in business paradigms and manufacturing process
models, it will affect all levels of production and supply-chains, including business and production
managers, factory workers, cyber-physical systems designers, customers, end-users and more.

4.0 Appendix

MIU Students with the speaker Ir. Dr. Ling Chen Hoe