By Amira Yunos
President and CEO of Yokogawa Engineering Asia, Chay Kin Wah, and regional business development manager, Puranut Wisutjindaporn (Pong), discuss the group’s renewed sustainability direction. In its golden jubilee year, they share how Yokogawa has been contributing to Singapore’s water story and the wider South East Asian region since 1974.
“Growing together with Singapore’s development”
Yokogawa’s growth story in Singapore mirrors the nation’s building efforts — by bringing the concept of monozukuri, meaning ‘manufacturing excellence’ here and contributing to the growth of Singapore as a manufacturing hub.
“Singapore was Yokogawa’s first overseas expansion location,” said president and CEO Chay. Selected as the first overseas base as the company’s expansion plans in 1974, the Singapore entity had its first integrated factory and established its first development centre to create new solutions with its customers. Since then, the company has made substantial investments in Singapore to enlarge its operations, including being its first global production centre for its Distributed Control Systems (DCS) and global security competence lab.
Today, Singapore employs over 800 people in Singapore and serves as Yokogawa’s regional HQ for South East Asia, Oceania and Taiwan, overseeing activities in sales and marketing, engineering, manufacturing, supply chain and innovation, including Yokogawa’s first-of-its-kind Co-Innovation Centre, artificial intelligence (AI) lab, and the Yokogawa Singapore Development Centre. It is also regarded as a ‘centre of excellence’ with the mandate to enhance the group’s global business strategy and better meet the market needs in the region.
Yokogawa’s journey in Singapore has been intertwined with the country’s economic development and infrastructure progress. Through R&D and manufacturing capabilities, Yokogawa collaborates with industry partners and educational institutions to address operational challenges and co-innovation solutions for industry needs.
For instance, Yokogawa has co-innovated with PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency, to trial an AI-based predictive diagnosis of critical assets targeting rotating equipment, control loops, and alarm management to enable smooth operations within the waterworks. Yokogawa believes in the importance of collaborative approach and the development of real-world solutions that help customers improve their operational efficiency and contributing to the carbon-neutral economy.
“Our region has always been the role model of Yokogawa,” said Chay. “This is where they first went abroad and internationalised [and] through Singapore, Yokogawa expanded and grew internationally.
“In the future, we will continue to use Singapore as a lighthouse and as a hub to venture into new areas.”
“In the future, we will continue to use Singapore as a lighthouse and as a hub to venture into new areas.”
Chay Kin Wah, president and CEO, Yokogawa Engineering Asia
SDG6 and sustainability direction in South East Asia
Moving forward, Chay said that the sustainability direction at Yokogawa is positioned to place more emphasis in industry segmentation, under three categories: energy and sustainability including oil and gas, power, renewable energy and water; materials covering pulp and paper, chemicals, mining and electric vehicle (EV) mobility; and lastly, life comprising life science, pharmaceutical, biotech and F&B industries. The company is already reputable in process industries, in particular the upstream oil and gas, petrochemicals, and related industries, and this formation will help streamline Yokogawa’s presence more in those industries.
“By positioning our global corporate organisation this way, we want to build a stronger position in the new industries which are thriving, beyond our traditional strong foothold. It also outlines our ambition for growth and underscores our dedication to sustainability as a core pillar of our business approach and integrating sustainability into every facet of its operations,” Chay said.
For Pong, he believes there is still much to be done especially in the South East Asia region in order to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, and this presents a great business potential not just for Yokogawa but all the players in the water industry. “Water customers in the region have different maturity levels and needs. We have to understand these differences and customise our solutions to suit their requirements,” Pong added. Yokogawa hopes to leverage its network of local sales offices throughout the region to engage and serve its water customers across the entire value chain from treatment plants, water loss reduction and flood management.
Yokogawa aims to improve water treatment processes, minimise water loss, and safeguard water quality by harnessing the power of technologies and constantly pushing the boundaries of innovation. One of such applications is the optimisation of microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) membranes cleaning schemes using AI and machine learning (ML) algorithms. It envisages that this solution could be used in the potable water reuse application to promote the circularity of water as a resource.
“One of the most talked-about chemicals in the water industry right now are the per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as ‘forever chemicals’. Yokogawa recently forged a new partnership with Synergen Met to address this PFAS issue in the North American market,” Chay said. Through this partnership, Yokogawa taps Synergen Met to provide its foam fractionation and thermal plasma technologies to capture, concentrate, and destroy PFAS without creating harmful, residual byproducts, while Yokogawa provides its sensor, control, and remote access technologies to enable remote autonomous operations, along with local manufacturing, support, and services.
Pong also highlighted Yokogawa’s initiative to sponsor ‘Our Blue World’ documentary, which recently had its Asia premiere in the Singapore International Water Week (SIWW) 2024, to drive meaningful impact and foster a greater understanding of the critical need to protect the earth’s precious water resources.
“The film is not just a documentary, but a call to action. By supporting this documentary, we aim to raise awareness about the importance of preserving our water ecosystems, promote actions that can lead to positive environmental change and highlight both the importance of water sustainability and the role of technology in achieving it,” said Pong.
“We recognise the vital role that water plays in sustaining life, ecosystems, and economies. Our approach to water here is multifaceted and we are dedicated to fulfilling our commitment through technologies and partnerships, advancing SDG6 and ensuring universal access to clean water and sanitation for all.”
Images: Yokogawa
