TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
ASEAN should benefit from Industry 4.0
ASEAN countries are advised to focus, in particular, on new technologies related to the digital economy.
Change Size
ASEAN countries are advised to focus, in particular, on new technologies related to the digital economy. (Shutterstock/File)
F
rom artificial intelligence and robots, to big data and clean energy, disruptive technologies are rapidly redefining our daily lives, our businesses and economies. And in our interconnected world, these deepening impacts of “Industry 4.0” should compel countries to prepare for changes.
ASEAN countries are advised to focus, in particular, on new technologies related to the digital economy. However, to do so successfully requires overcoming a few key challenges: Ensuring that necessary regulation and public infrastructure is in place, developing human resources and intensifying cooperation.
Industry 4.0 promises a revolutionary new paradigm for economic production that employs cyber-physical production systems, including online networks of sensors, machines, work pieces and information technology systems that span entire value chains. These sophisticated new systems boost productivity and lead to levels of efficiency that were not imaginable just a couple of years ago.
But these benefits also come at a cost in the form of potential labor market disruption.
These changes are transforming Asia, at least as much as anywhere else. China’s e-commerce leads worldwide and India now has Bangalore as its own Silicon Valley. To survive the global competition, ASEAN countries should prepare an adaptive digital economy ecosystem as the foundation to participate in Industry 4.0.
The increasing levels of internet penetration in ASEAN nations provides a strong basis for this participation. According to a GoogleTemasek survey, by 2016, 260 million individuals in the ASEAN region had regular access to the internet. This is projected to increase to 480 million by 2020.
With the average annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate standing at 4.9 percent in 2016, ASEAN has one of the highest regional rates in the world. Of the region’s population of more than 600 million people, more than 65 percent are of productive age, with a rapidly expanding middle class.
