Digital Transformation - Should SMEs go Digital?
Industry 4.0, digital transformation and automated technologies - these are just a few industry developments confronting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) today.
Mr Sam Chee Wah, General Manager of Feinmetall Singapore, shares his company's experience and provides practical ideas on how SMEs can overcome challenges and 'go digital' to improve business agility, competitiveness, and growth.
German-Singapore precision engineering joint venture Feinmetall Singapore (Feinmetall) is a leading one-stop turnkey design, manufacturing, testing, and service centre for semiconductor wafer probe cards. With 60 employees today, the company has grown from its humble roots in 2007 when it was five-man repair centre. Mr Sam attributes this steady growth to the company’s decision to embark on digital transformation.
He elaborated, “Global trends affect all businesses, including SMEs. In 2016, we started to see rapid adoption of digitalisation globally, along with increasing customer expectations and demand. Digital transformation was not so much as a choice but something we knew we had to invest in, to stay competitive and to survive.”
Feinmetall was amongst the first in Singapore’s manufacturing industry to embrace digital transformation. “From the start, we recognised that digital transformation is a journey,” shared Mr Sam. “We learnt that the way to make progress was to actively implement, observe, analyse, change, and fine-tune our systems and processes, working collaboratively with our partners and customers.”