Streamlining for the next industrial age

Josephin Galla, managing director of SAP Vietnam

That puts businesses in a dilemma because the industry today may not yet be ready to meet the new emerging demands. Many industries are still in the assembly line production mode. There are serious challenges such as real-time supply chain, agility, product innovations, and manufacturing models to be in place to meet the new demands more effectively.

Industry 4.0 is quickly shifting manufacturing from isolated, optimised cells of business processes, systems, and resources to fully integrated processes across borders within a value chain of an industry. This opens up lot of possibilities for innovation and improving customer satisfaction. For this reason, businesses around the world are adopting the intelligent technologies to stay relevant.

Business leaders in Vietnam must be ready for the great change that is underway. Given its current growth trajectory, Vietnam is targeted to become a developed economy by 2045, according to the Vietnamese government’s strategy. One of the most important keys to get there will require Vietnamese businesses to become intelligent enterprises and harness Industry 4.0 to their advantage.

According to PwC’s Industry 4.0 Vietnam Survey, 67 per cent of Vietnamese businesses indicate that they are feeling the impacts of Industry 4.0 now, or will in three years’ time. Despite this, not many have a clear understanding of its concept and impacts. They estimate that Industry 4.0 will require significant up-skilling, which may impact their organisation and ways of working.

Despite these uncertainties, Vietnamese businesses are positively embracing Industry 4.0 and expect to personally benefit from it: 35 per cent feel that digitalisation and automation would help improve speed of product delivery and completion, while 23 per cent believe it would lead to improvement in product quality.

In my role at SAP Vietnam, I have had the opportunity to engage with many Vietnamese business leaders and I see many passionate and innovative people who are eager to step out of their comfort zone and do things differently. Clearly, Vietnamese companies and business leaders are ready to adapt to Industry 4.0.

SAP is working closely with our customers to help them understand the importance of becoming an intelligent enterprise, which is the key to not only surviving but thriving in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. An intelligent enterprise builds upon the promise of digital transformation by using data-driven intelligence to drive better business outcomes based on superior insights.

By leveraging the SAP Leonardo platform that combines Internet of Things technology with the SAP cloud platform, we can help Vietnamese manufacturers to connect their production line to the backend system to further improve and drive down costs. Eventually, businesses in Vietnam can increase their competitiveness in a regional or even global stage.

SAP Vietnam recently organised the Asian Innovators Summit in Ho Chi Minh City, which was attended by business and technology leaders from leading companies as well as industry players in Vietnam. The event provided a platform for Vietnamese businesses to gain valuable insights on how the latest technology and solutions can help accelerate their innovation agenda and help create new business models through the Industry 4.0 revolution.

In line with the “Made in Vietnam” 4.0 agenda, SAP has set its primary focus for the country in 2019 on delivering the intelligent enterprise to Vietnamese customers and helping them capitalise on the emerging experience economy.

SAP has been in Vietnam for 10 years, and during that time it has been lucky to gain the trust of over 500 customers from across industries, including customers who already adopted solutions to drive their companies’ transformation. The company has a clear vision to power a digital Vietnam and support as many new and existing customers as it can.

By Josephin Galla Managing director, SAP Vietnam