Saturday May 9, 2009
Support for more Research and Development
TAN Sri Lin See-Yan’s article invokes much interest and he is right in stressing that there should be greater focus and effort in research and development (R&D) during this economic downturn, to capitalise on demand upon recovery.
However, R&D requires funds. The small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which form the industrial backbone in our country, have limited reserves or budgets for this purpose.
As such, the Government should be more liberal in handing out grants towards this end to industrial enterprises which are able to prove their commitment.
Tan Sri rightly stated the case of GE (General Electric) which lost out to competitors which developed a new generation of lighting – LEDs – which are energy efficient.
LED lighting holds great promise to replace conventional lighting and in fact is being adopted around the world today.
It enables energy savings of up to 90% and is environmentally friendly; it has a long life of up to 50,000 hours (11 years on 12-hour daily usage).
Los Angeles city has announced a decision to replace all 140,000 street lights with LED lights over a five-year period.
The iconic Empire State Building is being retrofitted with energy efficient lights.
Initiatives to reduce carbon footprints or carbon emissions by reducing energy usage, to mitigate climate change, are in place in various countries. Incandescent bulbs have been phased out in Australia, and the European Union, United States and India have also announced plans to phase it out soon.
There are enterprises in this country involved in R&D-backed manufacturing, which can develop state-of-the-art products, if they have access to funds.
An example is Powermicro Technology Sdn Bhd which develops and manufactures LED lightings in Shah Alam.
As a private SME venture, funds for this R&D is limited, hence its product development programme has been slow.
Malaysian engineers are world class and capable of high quality R&D, on par with the best in the West and Japan.
What Malaysian SMEs need is sufficient funding to acquire equipment and enlarge the engineering team, thereby raising R&D capacity to bring out results at a faster pace.
Datuk Eddie Seow
CEO, Powermicro Technology Sdn Bhd
Shah Alam
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