Malaysia Automotive Institute (MAI), an agency under the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), has been entasked with enhancing the competitiveness of the Malaysian automotive industry.
MAI has been at the forefront of various Industry 4.0 initiatives to be deployed by the Malaysian automotive ecosystem. The focal point for these initiatives is the MAI Design Centre located in Rawang, which will act as a catalyst for the automotive community to build upon MITI and MAI’s Industry 4.0 initiatives.
The MAI Design Centre is the second centre to be launched by MAI this year. In January, MAI launched the MAI Resource Centre in Bukit Beruntung, which is the focal point for human capital development, technology validation and adoption of automation practices.
Yesterday, the Deputy Minister of International Trade and Industry, Datuk Haji Ahmad Bin Haji Maslan, launched the MAI Design Centre. The Minister was accompanied by Datuk Nik Rahmat Nik Taib, Deputy Secretary of Industry MITI, Datuk Isham Ishak Deputy Secretary of Trade MITI, Wan Suraya Wan Mohd Radzi, Deputy Secretary of Strategy and monitoring, Mr Sunao Matsubayashi, Director (Research and Development), Daihatsu Motor Co. Ltd. Datuk (Dr) Aminar Rashid, CEO and President of PERODUA, and Datuk Madani Sahari, CEO of MAI.
The MAI Design Centre is established with the purpose of enhancing the implementation of Industry 4.0 in the Malaysian automotive industry specifically in the areas of design engineering, simulation and prototyping. It is a product of Government-Industry cooperation between MAI, PERODUA and their vendors.
It will be an open sharing Industry 4.0 platform whereby any OEM and vendor from various tiers can leverage on the hardware and software available, such as the Fused Deposited Material 3D Printer, Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) 3D Printer for the additive manufacturing, Augmented Reality, the MAI High Performance Computing Server and many more.
MAI Design Centre will also enable the automotive industry to conduct simultaneous engineering between the OEM and their vendors during the product development stage of a new model. This will assure quality, and improve productivity of new model development thus ensuring good user-experience in the finished product.
The establishment of MAI Design Centre will also promote a more conducive environment for the industry to innovate and to have strategic alliances and collaboration, which is vital for our local industry to remain competitive and to be a part of the global supply chain.
The facilities at MAI Design Centre is well equipped with technologies which enables its’ utility to cut across other industries such as the aerospace industry and the overall transportation sector.