Thales Digital Factory Expands to Singapore
In an inauguration ceremony held November 29, Singapore became the third country, after France and Canada, to welcome the Thales Digital Factory.
Known for its technology investments, vibrant ecosystem and connectivity, Singapore is a prime destination for innovation to thrive. The addition of Singapore to the Digital Factory network will accelerate innovation and digital transformation in the region and allow Thales to leverage its innovative services in aerospace, space, ground transportation, defence and security to its customers in a collaborative way.
The inauguration ceremony at the new premises, located at WeWork in Singapore's Central Business District, was a major event. Thales leaders from France and Singapore, including Pascale Sourisse, SEVP, International Development, Millar Crawford, EVP, Ground Transportation Systems, and Olivier Flous, VP, Digital Transformation & Digital Factory, hosted close to 60 guests, notably Chan Chun Sing, Singapore’s Minister for Trade and Industry, Tan Kong Hwee, Executive Director at the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and H.E. Marc Abensour, the Ambassador of France to Singapore. The guests were also given a tour of four Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) already being worked on in the Digital Factory.
The event drew extensive media coverage, with primary news channels, Channel News Asia and Singapore’s Mediacorp in attendance, as well as visiting journalists from French publications La Tribune and Le Journal du Dimanche. CNBC’s Squawk Box morning news programme also featured a live interview from the Digital Factory with Pascale Sourisse.
"The Digital Factory network will play a crucial role in shaping innovation across industries and markets and allow organisations to capture those opportunities at a rapid rate,” declared Olivier Flous at the event. “The opening of the Singapore centre brings us closer to our Asia-Pacific customers and partners, to foster closer collaboration in addressing the challenges local organisations face. Beyond capitalising on the strong innovation landscape, we also hope to develop and deepen the talent pool of digital specialists in Singapore, making us a true partner to the innovation ecosystem in the country.”
The Digital Factory in Singapore is expected to house a team of 30 experts by 2019, including data scientists, software engineers, designers, scrum masters and cybersecurity experts, recruited internally and externally, with the intention to at least double in size over the next 3 to 5 years. It represents over 20 million euros of investment over the next five years.
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The Digital Factory The Digital Factory was launched in July 2017 in Paris as a fully-fledged internal digital company whose mission is to accelerate the digital transformation of Thales and its customers. It was expanded to Montreal in April 2018 and already hosts more than 230 experts in digital technologies (Cloud, Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, …) and methods (design thinking, lean start-up, agile software development) to develop innovative products in close collaboration with future users... The Digital Factory delivers first versions of new digital services in a few months to quickly test operational and business value, through Minimum Viable Products (MVP). With 15 MVPs already delivered within one year in domains such as air traffic management, avionics equipment repair, drone operations, airport passenger experience, maritime traffic, metros maintenance, the Digital Factory allows Thales’s customers to quickly experiment new solutions at a rapid rate to improve their operations and customers experience. |