L-R – MIMOS Chief Executive Officer Ahmad Rizan Ibrahim, MOSTI deputy minister Datuk Dr. Abu Bakar Mohamad Diah, and Northern Corridor Implementation Authority (NCIA) Chief Executive Datuk Redza Rafiq/ Photo credit: MIMOS
MIMOS Berhad and the Northern Corridor Implementation Authority (NCIA) jointly launched a human capital development centre, called MIMOS-NCIA Advanced Competency Development Centre (MIMOS-NCIA ACDC).
MIMOS, an agency under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), is Malaysia’s premier Applied Research and Development Centre in ICT, Industrial Electronics Technology and Nano-Semiconductor Technology. NCIA is the authority responsible for the socio-economic development in the Northern Corridor Economic Region (Koridor Utara), which encompasses 25 districts in northern Peninsular Malaysia in the states of Kedah, Perak, Perlis and Penang.
MIMOS-NCIA ACDC offers an end-to-end, world-class, high-technology industry training facility aimed at fostering hands-on experience needed to produce highly-skilled workforce in the Electrical & Electronics (E&E) sector.
The local E&E industry is being encouraged to take advantage of the MIMOS-NCIA ACDC to build a workforce with the high level skills required for Industry 4.0. The E&E sector is key driver for Malaysia’s industry, contributing RM288 billion (USD 67.2 billion) or 36.7 per cent of total national exports in 2016.
The Centre is expected to produce 2,000 high-impact E&E professional over five years, meeting the demand from all E&E companies operating in the country presently.
The advanced shared service facilities, which form a large part of MIMOS-NCIA ACDC, are internationally certified with ISO9001: 2008 and ISO/IEC17025. The facilities support NanoVerify programme, a joint programme between NanoMalaysia Berhad and SIRIM QAS.
Memoranda of Understanding and Memoranda of Agreement documents were exchanged between MIMOS and parties that will be taking part in the initial programmes at the Centre. These include NCIA, the University of Malaya, SAGE Interactive Sdn Bhd, Agensi Inovasi Malaysia (AIM), SIRIM Berhad, Technology Depository Agency Berhad (TDA), Grectronics Sdn Bhd, Eclimo Sdn Bhd, Penchem Technologies Sdn Bhd and Nanotech Science Sdn Bhd.
The Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Datuk Sri Panglima Wilfred Madius Tangau said (his speech was read by his deputy, Datuk Wira Dr. Abu Bakar Mohamad Diah) that the government-industry-academia joint initiative in providing high-impact competency development programme is a strategic move that would address the shortage of skilled workers and reduce the dependency on foreign expertise in the E&E sector.
“Advanced technologies, innovation and sophisticated machines are meaningless if our human capital does not have the competence to translate them into new knowledge and added value that will give a competitive edge to the country and bring benefits to the people,” Datuk Wilfred said.
He quoted the 2016/2017 Economic Report released by the Finance Ministry in conjunction with the 2017 Budget announced by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak in October last year, which had said that the country needed to accelerate the adoption of technology and innovation in order to move up the value chain of the manufacturing sector. The report added that the country needed to increase investment in human capital and research and development to enable it to achieve the objective.
NCIA Chief Executive Datuk Redza Rafiq Redza said, "The MIMOS-NCIA ACDC is the only facility in Malaysia that provides the 80 percent practical and 20 percent theory mode in industrial grade wafer fabrication. This learning concept enables accelerated development of skill sets that support movement up the E&E value chain initiatives and complements Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and Malaysia Board of Technologists (MBOT) programmes.”
“The MIMOS-NCIA collaboration is an excellent example of government agencies anchoring on the National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS) by complementing each other and utilising resources optimally,” he added.
Read a summary of the initiatives undertaken by MIMOS during the first six months of 2017 here.
