At the annual SkillsFuture Festival yesterday, Mr Chee Hong Tat, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry and Education, announced plans to “equip the workforce for the Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
Said Mr Chee: “Industry 4.0 is not about replacing existing workers with machines or new workers. An essential component is the training of existing workers to equip them with the skills to use the new technologies.”
Some of these skills include machine learning, entrepreneurship and data analytics.
In light of this, institutes of higher learning (IHLs) will be ramping up efforts to help equip individuals in Singapore with these skills.
One of these IHLs is the National University of Singapore (NUS), who will start a new Master of Science in Industry 4.0 course next month.
The MSc Industry 4.0 course is available on both full-time and part-time basis, and its curriculum is “specifically designed in accordance with the Singapore Economic Development Board’s (EDB) Singapore Smart Industry Readiness Index”.
According to NUS, the course “boasts a curriculum where learning takes place both inside the classroom and out in the industry”.
NUS will also provide customised training modules for companies, and according to a report on The Straits Times, has already partnered 10 organisations including United Overseas Bank (UOB) and the Institute for Human Resource Professionals.
IHLs will also work with each other and develop “stackable” modular courses in Industry 4.0.
For one, NUS Institute of Systems Science will partner Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP) and Temasek Polytechnic (TP) to allow modules from the polytechnics’ post-diploma programmes to be counted towards a Master of Technology.
