Speech by Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen at the MINDEF PRIDE Day 2011 Awards Ceremony, at the Drama Centre, National Library Building

Senior Parliamentary Secretary,
Permanent Secretary (Defence Development),
Government Parliamentary Committee colleagues,
Chief of Defence Force,
Senior management of MINDEF,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good afternoon.

This year, we mark the 30th anniversary of the Productivity and Innovation in Daily Efforts or PRIDE movement. As you saw in the clip, PRIDE was introduced in 1981. The idea was a simple one: we wanted to promote and nurture a culture of continuous productivity movements in MINDEF and the SAF. Well here we are thirty years on, and this push continues to be relevant and indeed has now taken a national imperative. Many of you will remember that the recently held Economic Strategies Committee and, ensuing from that, the National Productivity and Continuing Education Council (NPCEC) which now has set targets across many industry sectors to improve our productivity. It's a national imperative because if you look at the surrounding nations around us, factors of production - whether it is land, labour or utilities - are stacked against us. We have expensive land certainly. Our utilities, we import all our energy needs and our wages are much higher compared to other countries. So there is really a strategy of reform, that the way forward for Singapore to maintain our comparative advantage must be productivity-and innovation-driven. We must leverage on our human resource to more than make up for our higher costs of other factors of production. And in this context, Government agencies including the SAF and MINDEF should take the lead. The PRIDE movement over the past 10 years has evolved to push for innovation and organisational excellence and I think that's the right approach. Because unless you can get your organisation into a coherent, integrated, thinking organisation, all these top-down approaches won't work. As you look at these little anecdotes and examples, simple ideas, it reflects that at each workplace you must have people who are engaged, who see a problem and say, "Hang on, I can find a better solution for this. This is inefficient, I can find a simpler way, a more cost-effective way to have a better outcome." But to get that done, for a large organisation, is not a simple task. You may have remembered when we brought in new companies from overseas, when our industries restructured and we tried to move into the service sector. And they say that you go to Disneyworld or Universal Studios, it's a total experience. When you walk across the lobby, even the cleaning staff have a particular corporate culture: that they will show you the direction and they will be able to help you so that it will be a total experience. It's only possible because of that organisational excellence. So this is something that we in the SAF and MINDEF must continue to do. And we have to continue our efforts to get the best out of our people, to deal with processes systematically, to adapt best practices and to benchmark processes with world-class standards of performance. So if you ask a simple question: why does Company X produce better results than Company Y? Yes, it's sometimes the product but the defining thread is the organisational excellence.

I am also glad to note that our investment in PRIDE has translated into cost savings and organisational improvement. To date, 85% of SAF units have achieved certifications for organisational excellence, such as the ISO 9000, the Singapore Quality Class award, the Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series 18001 and the People Developer Standard. And according to the Organisational Climate Survey conducted last year, 86% of our servicemen recognise the need to continually seek better ways of doing things.

So this unceasing emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness since 1981 has also helped MINDEF stay at the forefront of the national productivity movement. Last year, MINDEF won Gold for the Best PS21 Project Award and Best Ideator Award for the third year running at the PS21 ExCEL Convention. MINDEF also participated for the first time last year in the World Conference on Quality and Improvement, and received the Use of Emerging Technology Award for the project, "Subject Matter Expert Reachback". And as I said, this was a world competition so the other competitors were not small companies: they included Boeing, 3M and the US Navy. I think that is a significant achievement. The project which was developed by Changi Maintenance Base makes use of real-time video to allow sailors to communicate with engineers stationed at various maintenance bases to solve complicated technical issues encountered by our ships at sea. When you drill down to these projects and when somebody produces the solution, many times your reaction is, "What a simple solution. Why didn't I think of that?" And I think it's a reflection of the engagement, the ability to try to think, of owning the problem and improving outcomes so that people and our systems benefit.

So increasingly, we are seeing projects being initiated from the ground up to provide operational solutions in the field, and this is as it should be. It reflects the ability of our people on the ground and their ownership to want to make improvements to our fighting systems and capabilities. This year, three such projects were developed - the Integrated Body Armour project from HQ Infantry and this will enhance the survivability and protection of our soldiers; the Radio Frequency Radiation Detector project from the Air Logistics Department which detects the presence of high electromagnetic fields on foreign ships that could interfere with the systems of our Super Pumas during landing and take off; and Tuas Maintenance Base's project to enhance the testing of Mine Disposal Charges.

We want this to continue; in fact we want to step it up. MINDEF will put in more resources to nurture an innovative SAF fuelled by the ideas of its servicemen. To encourage this, we are promoting a Safe-to-Experiment environment - in other words, don't be afraid to try and even make mistakes and learn. This is the safe-to-experiment environment. And we will double the Innovate@MINDEF Fund to $2 million. To encourage projects which have more advanced engineering and technical content, project teams in the SAF can now tie-up with institutes of higher learning, DSTA and DSO National Laboratories. Because such cross-unit and cross-domain collaboration have been a strong feature of the PRIDE Movement and will be further facilitated with Innobank, an online platform which will enable our soldiers to consult and exchange ideas with subject matter experts and fellow practitioners across MINDEF and the SAF. So we are leveraging, integrating and networking our R&D and innovative enterprises to share information, discuss problems, share resources and put your problems and solutions on a common platform. I think that will energise these movements.

For Organisational Excellence achievements, allow me to congratulate Changi Maintenance Base for winning this year's Minister for Defence Award and the MINDEF Innovation Award, as well as the Air Logistics Group, Rotary Wing, for winning the MINDEF Excellence Award. I would also like to commend the Naval Diving Unit for achieving the Singapore Quality Class Star and winning the MINDEF SAVE Award for achieving $1.05 million in cash savings with the Multi-Versatile Transportation Cradle. On the whole, MINDEF achieved a total cash savings of $136.9 million for Financial Year 2010. These are indeed commendable efforts.

To commemorate the 30th year of PRIDE, we will be giving out Special Awards to WITs teams which have contributed significant and memorable projects to the SAF over the years. My congratulations to the Special Award winners.

As the SAF continues to operationalise its 3rd Generation capabilities, we will need to generate greater operational capacity through efficiency and innovation. I would like to urge everyone in MINDEF and the SAF to continue to play your part as others before you have done in the last 30 years. Well done to all of you, and I wish all of us another productive year ahead. Thank you.

More Resources

MINDEF, SAF Celebrate 30 Years of Continuous Innovation at Work