The implementation of Industry 4.0 in advancing digital societies across Asia Pacific plays a crucial role in stimulating economic recovery and building resilient economies. But it also highlights the need for leaders to embrace organisational change across the region.
In Malaysia, digital transformation of everything on the factory floor has delivered significant value through data, analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning. The arrival of smart manufacturing has also played a critical role in helping increase production capacity and productivity, all while reducing material wastage across the manufacturing value chain.
Although digital transformation has revolutionised the industry, it has also forced changes within processes and people. As a result, many leaders are learning that there is no such thing as a one size fits all approach to transformational change. Instead, it’s the unique culture and values in every factory site and organisation that needs an additional focus to bring digital initiatives to life.
Industry 4.0 is much more than businesses leveraging emerging technologies. Rather than replacing people, the best results occur when technology and human ingenuity complement each other. Thankfully, female leaders in Malaysia are leading the way in ensuring companies adapt to changes brought about by digital transformation.
The value of mentorship
In a world of data-driven decision-making, leadership is less about what is said and more about allowing the data to drive the strategy, work activities, and measuring results. Ultimately, it’s about evolving to a more objective-oriented approach on every implementation. These days, we’re seeing more female leaders enter the male-dominated industry of manufacturing, bringing with them valuable change.
One of the most significant changes that female leaders bring to Industry 4.0 is being seen as mentors by their teams. By increasing the empowerment of the team and allowing them to drive, participate in and enjoy the process, they can understand the market need and work the proposal to solve customer pain points.
Mentoring also helps leaders and teams to be more confident. It inspires trust in a working environment where everyone can see their work’s value and how it contributes to the bigger picture. By working as a team to discuss our customers’ issues and future market needs, we can collectively tailor the solution to help our customers, and our people grow.
Strengthening female leadership in the age of Industry 4.0
With the ability to zoom out, we provide different digital tools and services to enable customers to collect and analyse data to help them make better decisions on the procure-to-buy process, supplier consolidation, and strategy negotiation. To increase our customers’ efficiency and cost savings, we must also practice what we preach internally within our teams.
At RS, we are proud that 32% of our leaders and 44% of our Board are female. But we also understand why we need to continuously improve diversity and inclusion across the organisation to unlock greater business value together. By embracing organisational change and implementing the right processes, it becomes much easier to replace silos with the introduction of cross-functional collaboration and empowered decision-making.
For these reasons alone, empowering women with education to further hone their digital and leadership skills should be a priority for every business. Investing time in understanding female leaders’ challenges is essential and providing the resources they need to tackle the obstacles ahead is a great starting point. But we encourage leaders to think even bigger.
Diversity of thought
To successfully lead in a male-dominated industry, a value-driven approach must take precedence, especially as traditional hurdles such as siloed implementation and analysis paralysis make it nearly impossible to adapt to a continuously changing world.
Unlocking the actual value of Industry 4.0 is much more than leveraging new technologies. Sure, the digitally enabled factories of today look very different from a decade ago. But diversity of thought and greater collaboration will provide greater adaptability. Additionally, creating a culture that elevates teams by encouraging communication around individual perspectives and thinking that allows employees to see beyond themselves and their teams paves the way for transformational change.
Diversity and inclusion must be top priorities for any leader serious about transforming their organisation’s culture. To date, 90% of RS staff have completed our global inclusion training module, which was designed to raise awareness of our biases and the impact they can have on the decisions we make as a team. As we continue to reap the benefits of this building this new culture, the training will be mandatory for all new starters in 2023.
We also encourage our teams to think about their impact in the office and ask our employees to take two paid annual volunteering days a year to share their time and skills on a project that makes a difference to the community. Once again, teams need to work to something that’s bigger than themselves.
Female leaders in the age of Industry 4.0 are bringing their compassionate wisdom and humility to the factory floor while also motivating teams through transformation. By eliminating silos and the loudest voice in the room from calling all the shots, we are allowing every individual to see how their work impacts their team, employer, local community, and beyond.
By Sean Er Lim, Country General Manager (Malaysia), RS
