Dr Robert Yap, Executive Chairman, YCH Group
Mr Tan Kok Yam, Chief Executive, SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG)
Bro Joseph Goh, Co-Chairman of NTUC Land Connectivity Cluster
Distinguished guests, partners,
Sisters and Brothers,
Good morning and Happy National Day!
Congratulations to YCH Group on being appointed SkillsFuture Queen Bee in the supply chain and logistics sector. This is a significant event.
Congratulations too on your 70th Anniversary! It is truly a milestone that is worth celebrating.
I have seen in the last ten years of partnership with YCH Group, growing from strength to strength. Under Dr Robert Yap’s leadership, YCH Group has grown into one of Singapore’s largest homegrown logistics and supply chain company, contributing to our nation’s growth and prosperity.
But when we congratulate you on the 70 years, it is looking backwards. As Dr Robert Yap has said, in the world that we live in today, we must cast our vision forward. Look at the different opportunities, even as the challenges come.
Today’s event is timely, given the current geopolitical uncertainties and the global developments.
Your theme “from disruption to opportunity” is an apt one. Up close and personal with Dr Robert, I have always seen his energy and excursion of ideas.
In Singapore, having an attitude of Dream, Dare and Do – is critical. I am glad that the partnership between YCH and NTUC has gone into a mode where we not only look at preserving status quo, forging livelihoods under current circumstances, but new capabilities in Dream, Dare, Do as partners.
I am looking forward to see how we can seize new opportunities from a world disrupted by geostrategic forces and technology.
10 years ago, it was Industry 4.0, now it is the ever-pervasive AI in the workplace.
Navigating uncertainties and disruptions ahead
Over the past few years, we have seen unprecedented disruption to global supply chains — from the COVID-19 pandemic to geopolitical tensions, Covid-19 and most recently, tariffs.
Businesses are operating under this increasingly uncertain and complex environment. Especially for SMEs, where there is limited access to capital, human talent. We know how many of our SMEs struggle, not only to survive but even more difficult to thrive in this business environment and scale their business.
Further, with technological advancements pushing the boundaries, the next era of supply chain management will not simply be about moving goods from A to B in the most efficient manner.
It will lean towards building smart, adaptive networks that are sustainable, inclusive, and maybe even more shock-ready.
How do we move towards such environment? I humbly suggest that we must rethink the way we do business; not just as a single entity but as an ecosystem. Especially in an ecosystem where tripartism in Singapore works towards a win-win-win.
Win – pro-business; Win – pro-workers; Win – pro-growth for our nation.
There must be greater investment in digital infrastructure, including artificial intelligence and different analytics tools for supply chain visibility, efficiency and agility.
Even as we invest in the businesses, it will require investments into our human capital. Our workforce to match the speed of the technology progress, artificial intelligence, generative AI and agentic AI.
Nevertheless, in Singapore’s ecosystem, we must invest in infrastructure, invest in our human capital, so we can seize these opportunities.
And as we are doing so, cast our vision beyond the Singapore shores to the region, so that our businesses can remain part of the business network that will keep us relevant regardless of the different changes. We may not fully understand the changes, but we know we have the human capital, we know we have the networks not just in Singapore but ASEAN and beyond, to seize those new opportunities.
This means embracing partnerships, within and across borders, within industries and across industries and sectors, to build ecosystems of innovation and shared resilience.
How then can businesses, especially SMEs, innovate and drive change?
Beyond companies, how do we think of Queen Bees, like YCH Group, that are sizeable companies to influence the SMEs that are suppliers, to promote the ecosystem of change, not just in ideation but the practical approaches to building an ecosystem to uplift a Queen Bee.
The SkillsFuture Queen Bee programme has allowed businesses and partners to come together, co-create ideas in the boardroom and bring these ideations to identify opportunities for success.
Benefits of the SkillsFuture Queen Bee partnership between YCH Group, NTUC & SSG
As a Queen Bee for the supply chain and logistics sector, YCH Group will lend its industry practices and knowledge to support SMEs in their network to transform in the areas of digitalisation, industry 4.0 adoption, and AI.
This has been encapsulated in our collaboration in our Company Training Committee that NTUC has partnered with YCH Group.
NTUC’s interest is primarily for the workers’ lives and livelihoods, better wages, welfare and work prospects. The partnership with YCH to map out job transformation possibilities to help YCH transform and in the past few years, they have put in money to look at automation in the warehouse, including Automated Guided Vehicles.
The idea brought workers to be upskilled and YCH can enjoy higher productivity, and workers have better prospects and wages.
I heard that Dr Robert has gone into dark warehouses, where drones are flown to do stocktaking. Instead of traditional methods that would have taken one day to do stocktaking for a single block, the drones can do the same in a single morning through RFID scanning.
These are real possibilities from ideation to realities. This is encapsulated in NTUC's proposal in the Company Training Committees, where we put together expertise to help with Operation and Technology Roadmap.
For businesses, especially for the SMEs, I know sometimes it is very daunting to survey the technologies available and to contextualise it into your business. What we have done is that we set-up our teams at NTUC and deploy them forward to the SMEs, working with businesses to look at how their operations can benefit from different technologies.
Importantly, bring your workers along, encourage and match them towards this vision so that the businesses and workers in partnership, can move together.
In the last few years, under Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, when he was Deputy PM and Minister of Finance, we have gotten $100 million into the CTC Grant, to facilitate this process and make it easier for SMEs.
We have moved the needle. The CTC Grant has been broadened to $300 million. The opportunities for SMEs to tap into this space is growing. When we look at the foundational pieces of the CTCs in practice, in your sector with YCH Group, business owners who have not heard about CTCs – we are very happy to talk to you further and introduce CTCs.
More importantly, to seed the new idea of the cluster Company Training Committee with the Queen Bee. The ecosystem is not just one-to-one, but with NTUC’s relationship with SMEs, we are broadening it to a sector where we hope to scale at a faster speed to meet the challenges of today, overcome them and seizing opportunities for all.
I am very encouraged to meet likeminded people, like Dr Robert, this morning. In the disrupted world today, given the trajectory of Singapore’s growth, maybe there are more things to worry about because the world is reaching equilibrium and tapering off, and Singapore may not be able to find the new paradigms. We have grown extremely well for the last 60 years but our new constraints of ageing population, constraints such as land and business costs.
Perhaps if we change our lenses to look at the changes in the world today, we can seize those opportunities to overcome the challenges.
How do we reset the mindset for us to draw the energy from the business partners, to draw the energy from tripartism where NTUC will step forward?
Closing remarks
As I conclude my remarks, for all the SMEs, remember you have a business federation with you – a Queen Bee, remember those in red are for you (NTUC); with a request that when you succeed, take care of your workers and in partnership, create an ecosystem in Singapore that will anchor us for success in the next 60 years.
I look forward to listening to all the ideas that you may be sharing. We will take all of them onboard and see how we can have a more effective ecosystem.
Thank you and I wish all of you a successful summit.
