Hong Kong Productivity Council Theme of the Year 2021: “Make Smart Smarter”

• Smarter Era of Intelligent Manufacturing Launch
  Ceremony
• Witnesses New Milestone for Reindustrialisation in
  Hong Kong

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 26
February 2021 – The Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC)
launches a series of activities in 2021 themed “Make Smart Smarter”. The campaign
with “Smarter Era of Intelligent Manufacturing Launch Ceremony” was
kicked off today, revolving around the theme of “reindustrialisation”.

The “Smarter Era of Intelligent Manufacturing Launch Ceremony” was officiated together by Dr David Chung, Under Secretary for Innovation and Technology, HKSAR Government (fourth from left); Mr Clemente Contestabile, Consul General of Italy in Hong Kong (third from right); Ms Rebecca Pun, Commissioner for Innovation and Technology, HKSAR Government (second from right); Dr Daniel Yip, Chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries (third from left); Mr Roberto Leone, Managing Director of NiRoTech Limited (first from right); Mr Willy Lin, Chairman of HKPC (fourth from right); Mr Mohamed Butt, Executive Director of HKPC (second from left) and Mr Edmond Lai, Chief Digital Officer of HKPC (first from left).

Co-organised by the
Federation of the Hong Kong Industries (FHKI), this spotlight event exhibited
and introduced an excellent example of reindustrialisation whose research and development
were undertaken by HKPC. Gaining support from the Innovation and Technology
Bureau and funding support from the R&D Cash Rebate Scheme of the Innovation
Technology Commission of the HKSAR Government, production has been successfully
commenced in NiRoTech Limited (NiRoTech), a local intelligent security product
manufacturer.

This smart
production line, named the “OWL” intelligent production line, gives into full
play the characteristics of an owl’s wisdom, piercing eyes, flexible body, soft
neck (360^o vision) and agile movement. These perfectly echo the key
features of this intelligent production line which has high flexibility,
excellent agility to cater for different production needs, stringent and
precise production capacity, as well as non-stop operation. Five key “S.M.A.R.T”
elements: Speed, Multi-function, Accuracy, Reliability and Traceability, can be
seen in this production line offering edges of intelligence and efficiency
enhancement.

In order to
effectively respond to Hong Kong manufacturers’ demands on production space, the “OWL” production line adopts a U-shape compact layout design and
incorporates the beauty of the “Industry 4.0” (i4.0) lean manufacturing
“vision”, significantly reducing the factory area to meet the unique land
constraints of Hong Kong. NiRoTech’s smart factory only occupies 10,000 square
feet, saving 50% of the land. It is also equipped with 12 robots and large amount
of customised intelligent automation systems and digital technologies. Compared
with traditional manual production, the overall production capacity increases
by 1.5 times.

Mr Willy Lin, Chairman of
HKPC, and Dr Daniel Yip, Chairman of FHKI, were joined by Mr Clemente Contestabile, Consul General of Italy in Hong Kong; Dr David Chung, Under Secretary for Innovation and
Technology, Ms Rebecca Pun, Commissioner for Innovation and
Technology; Mr Roberto Leone, Managing Director of NiRoTech; as well as Mr Mohamed Butt, Executive Director of HKPC and Mr Edmond
Lai, Chief Digital Officer of HKPC, for the launch of the ceremony.

In his welcoming address, Mr Willy Lin, Chairman of HKPC, said, “HKPC is
committed to offering staunch support for Hong Kong SMEs in technology R&D
and technical aspects, with the aim of creating value for the industrial
development of enterprises with state-of-the-art technologies. The ‘OWL’
intelligent production line is an excellent example of applying innovative
technologies that also fits perfectly with HKPC’s theme of this year ‘Make
Smart Smarter’. As owl represents wisdom, by being smarter and using innovative
technologies such as IoT, AI, big data, intelligent robots and smart production
processes to unleash production opportunities of i4.0, it will  certainly scale up productivity and contribute
to successful reindustrialisation in Hong Kong, thus achieving the goal of
‘Make Smart Smarter'”.

He continued, “It is really encouraging to see this ‘reindustrialisation’ example witnessing the concerted
efforts of the Government, industries, business chambers and HKPC to promote
reindustrialisation in Hong Kong! HKPC sincerely urges various sectors to work
together to accelerate reindustrialisation for the swift recovery of Hong Kong economy
and to ensure the “Made-in-Hong Kong” brand to continue to shine bright in the
international arena — Make Smart Smarter”.

Dr David Chung, Under Secretary for
Innovation and Technology, said, “the Government has been actively promoting
‘reindustrialisation’ in recent years by providing support in infrastructure,
finance, technology and talents in order to create new area of growth and great
job opportunities which would help alleviate Hong Kong’s competitiveness. I
wish to see more enterprises ‘Make Smart Smarter’, and make good use of these
opportunities provided by I&T, as well as the support from the Government,
to work and contribute together in turning Hong Kong into an international
I&T hub”.

Dr Daniel Yip, Chairman of FHKI said, “This collaboration of HKPC and
NiRoTech serves as a valuable reference for industrialists on how to integrate
i4.0 into production lines to enhance efficiency, elevating their confidence to
set up high value-added manufacturing facilities in Hong Kong. With
comprehensive policy support and HKPC’s professional consultative service, FHKI
believes that more Hong Kong manufacturers will join the force of
‘reindustrialisation’ by pursuing technological advancement and setting up
smart manufacturing plants locally, taking the Hong Kong industries into a new
era”.

The “OWL” intelligent production line
integrates the smart adoption of advanced robots with machine vision, smart
electrical and mechanical devices, laser processing and sensor technologies.
Also, by incorporating AI, IoT, human machine interface, real-time data
collection and data analytic technologies, it ensures the full automation and
digitalisation of production, assembly and monitoring to achieve big data
analytics. Apart from three technologies whose patents are soon
to be applied, the project also assists NiRoTech’s business planning in exploring
the emerging markets and grasping new opportunities.

Mr Roberto Leone, Managing Director of NiRoTech, said, “Mechatronic Manufacturing in Hong Kong: our strategy was clear from
the start when we sought HKPC’s assistance for help to realise intelligent
production. For some, this goal was still immature and very difficult to
achieve, especially with Hong Kong being chosen as our operation hub. Today we
can proudly say we have achieved it with the system in Hong Kong operating
satisfactorily as schedule. Despite there are challenges as the COVID-19
pandemic was affecting all in 2020, the result is now vividly in front of us, and
we can touch it. Yet this is only the first step of a long journey”.

For more
details about “Make Smart Smarter”, please visit the dedicated website: https://smarter.hkpc.org/en/index.html