The topic is facilitating technological advancements and so in production.

 

Locally, there are a few people who are using equipment that we could consider technologically advanced.  Right. Now you're seeing a lot of small people doing things using like laser cutters, CNC rotors and cutting machine. I don't hear of anybody in a production setting using 3D printers yet, but I know for example the Universes here, you would take and see them you have 3D printers, right?

And so people are using some amount of technological advanced equipment in their production and different levels, even within the food industry. You know, remote control equipment, if you want, for lack of a better term, and so on, where you can adjust the settings and programme settings and so on. But on the international level, there is what is called industry 4.0. Yeah, yeah. Which is where you have interconnected equipment powered by the internet, internet of things. So you can remotely stay one place and control your machines and set them and program them and so on. So that's where things are moving in terms of even some of the equipment, I mentioned to you, CNC controlled equipment, laser cutters, etc. through the internet. So, you can design and send to equipment and produce identical things without having any worry about any various or quality defects and so on. Of course, on the other side of production there's also the planning part, not just the equipment. You have the equipment that will make the items, but production also includes planning when to plan or when to produce, what to produce, how many to produce, et cetera. So, in more organized production systems, they use software called enterprise resource planning. So, it manages your inventory, ties into your sales orders.

it makes a production plan and give instructions to people in terms of what to make and how many and so on. And know what is happening and even the equipment itself, but primarily from the software, the planning side is that AI is now a part of that scenario, you know, we're here talk a lot of AI in terms of more designing and drawing and creating artwork and so on. But AI is not being used in other ways to control production when assisting people is not taking them over, but assisting in decision making processes and so on. So we find a lot of that is happening in production on now with that.

On the software side as well in some personal environments, there is also reliance on simulation software where you can, for example, you want to set up or expand a factory before you actually start building the space and buying equipment, you want to test to see that whatever equipment you specify in our space, the pudding will actually deliver on what you want. So digitally or from a program point of view, you can simulate how the factory is set up and how it operates and runs and if you get to the output. So you can make a decision to say, okay, yes, this is exactly what I want to do. This is the space I want. This is that equipment I need to get. So, you know, it's a lot of digital, a lot of automation and a lot of AI and internet related things are converging to drive these advancements in production.

You mentioned industry 4.0 and digital transformation… Smart manufacturing. How can local manufacturers leverage these technologies to kind of transform their, well, you mentioned how they use it, you must be in their processes already, but.

 

05:43

How can you benefit from them using it in their processes, especially in relation to the export agenda? Right. Well, the thing is, and the beautiful thing about Industry 4.0 is that the tools are much more accessible now than before. In the past, because quite frankly, some of these technologies are quite old, the CNC technology, robotics,

 

06:12

simulation, digital tools are old, but the difference now is that they are accessible. In the past, they were very expensive. They were very specialized. There were few people producing them, so it was difficult to access them. Now you have affordable options and, of course, much more efficient and advanced options, which are doing even more functions than before. So

 

06:41

Access is fairly easy, things coming out of the fireies where a lot of electronics, I think you can get quite easily at different scales, obviously.

 

06:57

Small manufacturers, micro manufacturers in Jamaica, now need to look at how they can learn and take advantage of these equipment because A, it will help to drive efficiency. It will help to allow you to respond much quicker, make you more agile, right, to orders coming in and changes that may be required. It should allow you once you are operating in an optimal way, least reduction, to optimize the cost of production. Right. And, you know, so it is something that MSMEs need to start looking at and start implementing some of these technologies and learn about some of these technologies, which really can help them to

 

07:54

to benefit, to be more competitive. Okay. You mentioned, um, question. Somebody about disturbing the dorm. So you mentioned, I have the question here. So I'm going to ask about industry 4.0.

 

08:24

I can't move on to our next question because I have questions here but whenever you talk about something we kind of have a question in our head. Yeah okay don't worry we'll come back. How does it affect today? All right how does these how do these technology affect like the the authenticity of these products because we make a lot of Jamaican products by the incubator.

 

08:52

Do these impact the authenticity of the product? Because I don't know, maybe handmade things would be more, I don't know, be more authentic or so. In my opinion, and this is my opinion, it doesn't. Because the thing is, handmade really, and we have to be realistic.

 

09:16

making some handmade products unless they are for a really niche segment in the market are not competitive and unless you are a real master and have established yourself and or can establish yourself that people demand your handmade stuff these products aren't as competitive as before now using automation using technology to make things

 

09:44

does not make them any less authentic to me. In the Jamaican context, the inputs in terms of the raw materials, generally speaking, would be the same as what you would be using to, you know, handmade stuff. So if we're talking about making sandals from Jamaican goat skin, for example, you can automate the process of cutting out the leather and so instead of using hand,

 

10:14

isn't always accurate or consistent, which isn't always safe. When you're cutting, you can slip and damage yourself or a thing, or you can make a bad cut and spoil the material and have to start over again. Automating that on a CNC cutting machine, for example, or a laser cutter or something, gives you more accuracy, gives you more output. So the time it takes it to cut out the

 

10:44

five, six, ten pairs at the same time in terms of cutting all the materials. So it lends to the handmade and bear in mind some of these equipment only automate some processes. The more tedious, the more mundane activities would free up the master person to focus on the other aspects

 

11:13

that they can pay attention to the kind of quality that they would need. So in the assemblies, teaching and so on, certain aspects, automation can help. And that does not rub from the authenticity. From the design perspective, the software can help to enhance the designs. Okay. If we look at the Jamaican craft industry, one of the challenges we have, or a lot of people have,

 

11:40

is updating design. So using the same design from 25, 30, 40, 50 years ago and design taste change for the consumer. So using technology you can much more efficiently update your designs and experiment with new designs that can be converted to products. So it does enhance and it does support the authenticity part of it.

 

12:10

Okay, we know that MSMEs have limited resources, right? How does integrating these technologies in the production process kind of help with maybe controlling these resources and making best use of them? Right, well I mentioned earlier that the cost of accessing

 

12:40

is becoming more accessible now. Price of obtaining machines are coming down. However, until some MSVs are able to afford their own, then there are persons who you can outsource the use of their equipment from. People who have the 3D and the laser and the wood cutting rotors and stuff offer these services where you can go and...

 

13:09

they can produce the components for your product and you use it in assembling your final product. We at JBDC, at the incubator and resource center, whereas we don't yet have all of these tools available, we do have some tools, we have laser engraving and cutting machine, we have so amount of...

 

13:35

even though probably not highly automated, but some amount of automation in other incubators where persons can come and utilize these, they could come and rent the space, rent the use of equipment, and with our product development team, get supporting in transforming their products and doing some aspects of their production to help them to be introduced to this new way of doing things. And it's our intention or aspiration

 

14:05

equip ourselves with more of these tools that we can provide these services in a much more efficient way to MSMEs. So tell me more about some of the equipment that you have at the incubator. I know that you have some, I think you said it's computer aided design. Is it the laser? Is it the laser? Right. Yeah, the laser etching machine is computer aided.

 

14:35

Um

 

14:38

Now, we have the blast chiller, which is part of the Internet thing, thinking that you can control it by Wi-Fi. We have a dehydrator, which we can also control remotely and so on. So as simple as these advancements are, they do aid in the efficiency of operating the equipment.

 

15:06

It allows it to control better so you can set times. So if you know something should be processed in an hour in a machine, you don't have to worry about standing over the machine for the entire hour, or if you forget and it overruns in time and damages your product or anything like that. So just a little advance in these health, ensure that you minimize waste and you maximize production.

 

15:37

Okay. I don't know if you mentioned anything about innovation, but would you say that these, as simple as these technologies are, would they aid in innovation and value chain development? Oh, definitely. And although I haven't used the word innovation yet, everything we speak of, we're talking about now is innovation. And it drives innovation in terms of, pushes one's creativity from that aspect.

 

16:06

But these are applications of innovation, right? Innovation in processing and manufacturing techniques that allows you even to apply your own innovation in your products much more efficiently. It allows much more experimentation and development of prototypes because it turns our own time to...

 

16:35

create something is much shorter, much less expensive than before. And if you're doing it by hand and having a longer turnaround time to decide whether your idea works or not. So it does allow one to apply innovation much more successfully, much more efficiently, and much more cost effectively.

 

17:05

Okay, I want to ask a question in line with how receptive are JBDs and clients of technology by the IRC because I know that there is about 22 million 18 persons who use the agro-processing incubator and some others before it was 23 persons I think and it's a dramatic increase of the value of products produced in the incubator.

 

17:35

Right. So maybe that implies that they are receptive of this technology and this technology is actually driving production down there, right? Oh, yes, definitely. People are open to it and the kind of resistance that you may would have found years ago, even there, and the fact that we also provide support. So persons.

 

18:00

No longer have that fear. Oh, here's a machine that I'm not going to touch because if I push this one, it may blow up on me and so on. But with the support of our team who guide persons in using the equipment and shadow them are in case where we even we are the ones who operate the equipment and based on a train that we have. Persons are open to it and we're seeing more application, more use of it. Especially in the agro incubator.

 

18:29

you know, or filling machines. Some of the, even the packaging machine and the processing equipment that we have are really making that big difference. And the blue tier boards, as I say, they are improvements, but they are not totally foreign to persons. So one, simply looking at it and say, oh, but this is a machine, and it just does this. But the fact that it is fulfilling this,

 

18:59

need for efficiency and better use of one's production time is a testament that people are attracted to it, people want it, people have been asking us when we're going to get other equipment that can do more things efficiently and so on. So there's an awakening and people certainly are open to that.

 

19:22

and we are looking at other incubators to see how we can introduce more equipment that will allow that type of excitement and attraction. And what kind of services the IRC, the technical team at IRC offer in terms of someone who wants to, someone who uses the incubator, say you know what maybe I want a blastula for myself, maybe I want a

 

19:51

a facility for myself, what kind of service you offer in terms of picking out the right equipment for them and ensuring that it's relevant to the production process? Well, it's part of the support that we give. Typically, we would support persons with designing the product and producing a product from a product development point of view,

 

20:21

we put it on another umbrella for supply chain support or even a value chain support in that we may be able to identify appropriate types of equipment that may be good for you and make the recommendations based on your own facilities, capacity and so on. But interestingly that you asked that question, over the last two weeks we've had two clients reach out to us who have bought their own equipment

 

20:51

in particularly one with a, well, both of them with CNC laser cutters, and they were having challenges with operating them. So our team actually visited them or met with them and helped them to decipher the equipment and make recommendations on the type of software that they probably could use or, you know, how to reconfigure the machine.

 

21:18

to use it better in some cases. And for us, we find it exciting. And it's an opportunity for the team to learn as well, because in one part, well, in both cases, actually, the machines slightly differ from those that we have. And so we had to go back and do some research and learn some more about it. And then we go back and instruct the client. But clients have reached out to us, asking for recommendations or what equipment to.

 

21:48

purchase and where they could get it from. So we have assisted clients in that regard as well. And a lot of the recommendations now are in the direction of these kind of advanced equipment.

 

22:04

Okay, we'll call in. I got a lot of information from this interview. Okay. Thank you for that. Any final? My pleasure. Hopefully it's all clear and made sense. Usually it is. It's always, always made sense. It's. Yeah. If I need anything else, I'll call you. Okay. You give me a call. All right. That's it. You got no problem. Thank you. Bye bye. All right. You're welcome. Bye.

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