Abstract
The research is related to the challenge and barriers of small and medium enterprises in Singapore towards the plan, journey, and implementation of industry 4.0. This paper finds many related topics on barriers and challenges towards industry 4.0 worldwide and to benchmark towards the study in Singapore. An online survey to the small-medium enterprises in the precision engineering cluster was sent to the companies email. The majority of the respondents' surveys cite costs, skills, and organizational processes as the top three major barriers to implement industry 4.0 technologies. We find that the smaller organizations, with workforce of 50 or less, the inability to attract and retain the right skills and experience are the source of reluctance to pursue new concepts or technologies. However, even before taking the steps into industry 4.0, these organizations must focus on stability and flow in their day-to-day operations. They need to standardize and focus on what is value to their customers. Once all these are defined and attained, these organizations will have a higher chance of success towards the next industrial revolution level, which is industry 4.0. Besides, we propose forming an SME centre of excellence (COE) that supports small and medium sized companies short of these technical resources. With government grants, local institutions can provide support with industrial experts to assist SMEs in providing technical assessment and solutions. As a result, they will work hand in hand, developing tools, methods, and testing to find the right integration of lean and industry 4.0 into these organizations.