Speech by Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen, at the MINDEF PRIDE Day Award Presentation Ceremony at MINDEF Auditorium

Permanent Secretary (Defence Development),
Chief of Air Force,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good evening,Today's ceremony is an important occasion - we use it to recognise the individual achievements of servicemen and staff in MINDEF and the SAF. As we have seen in the video clip, it's also a good time for us to reflect on how the organisation has been improving, how we have found better ways to do things or implement new ideas. But beyond the personal recognition, their achievements set the tone for our organisation to be on the leading edge in productivity and innovation. And as the ME6 said in the video, it must be something that you believe in. I think this is their most important contribution because for us as an organisation, for MINDEF and the SAF to be world class organisations, we must constantly renew this drive to do things better or find new ways, even new ideas to achieve our goals, because that is what will set us apart.

MINDEF and the SAF should aspire to be an organisation widely acknowledged to have an entrenched culture where its people continually seek fresh, creative and innovative ways to achieve better outcomes. Many of us know of companies that have this type of global recognition. For example,Toyota. All of us know what it stands for and many of you have driven or drive Toyota cars, and it is the top car manufacturer in Japan. But also, books have been written about the company, as you know Toyota employs the principle of Kaizen, or continuous improvement, at the core of its production and quality control system. Toyota workers are always on the alert to spot glitches in the production process and to seek ways to improve it. They have done it so many years that it is a key part of their work culture, and some 90,000 employee suggestions are adopted each year. Likewise, other top global companies recognise that the best ideas come from the employees, for example 3M's Post-It notes, Google's Gmail, Google News and Google Translate. All these were ideas that came from the bottom-up. So a relevant question for us in MINDEF and the SAF is: Is it too big a dream, for MINDEF and the SAF to be like these companies, or at least have their traits too? Whatever your answer, because this is your organisation, I am sure that many of you would want to work in organisations that have this kind of reputation, where people are encouraged to contribute ideas that can make a difference.

Now we're talking about military organisations of course - MINDEF and the SAF - that even with its required discipline and mission orientedness, can display productive and innovative traits. It may be in small but impactful ways. For example, US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have devised ways to enhance their protection by rearranging seats in Army trucks so that they can face forward to better return fire. So I suppose they were sitting down there, you know one day on patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sort of looked at it and said, when somebody fires he has to turn around to fire back, so why don't we rearrange the seats? So it may be in small ways like this. In 2004, when the Republic of Singapore Air Force's KC-135R detachment was first deployed in Iraq, our airmen devised "cooling vests" - essentially it was a cameraman's vest that you see with many pockets, but they filled with frozen gel. I'm sure this was for vested interest, they must've been really very hot and they looked at the cameraman, borrowed it, and then found an ice pack and put it, and everybody decided this was a good SAF idea. It was in the sweltering heat of the summer months - 48 degree Celsius. Whatever it is, whether it is for vested interest, and there's nothing wrong with that, they decided that this was a good idea to implement. There are other more important examples.

To prepare for their deployment to the Gulf of Aden last year, the RSAF's Fokker-50 squadron was also on a constant lookout for better ways to do their job. When I flew with them recently, they showed me this innovation. They modified the aircraft to allow the aircrew to take sharper photos of suspected pirate vessels, and developed a cover to protect their aircraft from the desert environment. These efforts borne out of the spirit of continuous innovation and improvement is what the MINDEF PRIDE movement represents and encourages.

The theme for this year's MINDEF PRIDE Day is “iMatter. iCan. iWill.", and it tries to encourage each Regular, NSF and DXO to believe that they have the ability to change things for the better, in the way we train, exercise or fight. And I think all these encouragements are having a beneficial effect. Our servicemen and DXOs contributed over 110,000 quality suggestions and 5,000 quality WITS projects last year. That's quite a lot. More than a third of the total number of projects were in the operations and training category. This shows that our people on the ground do want to make improvements in the operational systems and capabilities. All these contributions, small or large, add to our quest to make MINDEF and the SAF a thinking progressive organisation. In this ceremony, we will highlight some of them. This year's winning projects in the operations and training category include Signal Institute's Rapid Deployment Server which improves the training efficiency of our soldiers on our C4 networks; the Navy's Underwater Mobile Target which enhances the realism of our anti-submarine warfare training; and Joint Department's Web-based Activity Trending System which improves our ability to collate and analyse intelligence more effectively.

Also from the operations category is this year's MINDEF Innovation Award winner - 6th Army Maintenance Base's project to reroute the air conditioning flow of the ARTHUR Weapon Locating Radar. Again, I saw this in Afghanistan. This innovative solution to keep the radar sufficiently cool enabled the SAF to extend the daily operating hours of the radar as well as its deployment period in Afghanistan. It made a critical difference because downtime would have meant that you're exposed when rockets are fired with no early warning, and those few critical seconds made a critical difference to the overall protection of International Security Assistance Forces at the Tarin Kowt camp in Oruzgan.

I am also pleased to note that our projects continue to do well in national and international competitions where we benchmark ourselves against the best in other industries. Last year's winner of the MINDEF Innovation Award, the Integrated Body Armour which I saw at the exhibition, won Gold at the International Exposition on Team Excellence, organised by the Singapore Productivity Association. MINDEF also competed against 149 teams across 13 countries in the International Convention on Quality Control Circles in Japan, and was awarded the convention's highest accolade, the Excellent Award, for two projects, Enhanced Testing for Mine Disposal Charges and the MATADOR sub-calibre training weapon round extraction tool. So we're making a difference and we're competing internationally, and that speaks a lot about how we are continuously improving.

But we can always be better and MINDEF will continue to step up its efforts to nurture an innovative SAF fuelled by the ideas of our servicemen. To encourage more ground-up initiatives, iDEAL 2, an online "suggestion box", has been extended to NSFs since January, and will be made available to Operationally-Ready National Servicemen by the end of this year. Last year, we doubled the Innovate@MINDEF Fund to $2 million to provide more funding for the trial of innovative projects. This has resulted in quality projects such as HQ CSSCOM's Commercial Fuel Card Expense Accounting System which successfully implemented the use of credit cards at commercial fuel stations. This improved the accuracy and efficiency of our accounting processes, and did away with the tedious manual verification of vehicle fuel payments.

A ready, capable and flexible SAF requires a strong culture of learning and innovation among its people. For their Organisational Excellence achievements and efforts in encouraging innovation within their units, I would like to congratulate the Force Readiness Squadron from the Navy, and 6 AMB who are winners of this year's Minister for Defence Award and MINDEF Excellence Award respectively. I would also like to commend the SAF Ammunition Command for winning the MINDEF SAVE Award for achieving $27 million in cash savings by successfully implementing the Just in Time methodology in our ammunition stockpiling processes. Their efforts have paved the way for the efficient management of combat rations, medical supplies and maintenance spares. On the whole, MINDEF achieved total cash savings of $163.6 million for Financial Year 2011, an increase of 20% from 2010. Well done to all of you.

A personal commitment to innovation, higher productivity and continuous learning must be a way of life for the SAF to be an effective force. I urge everyone in MINDEF and the SAF to continue to play your part to implement innovative ideas with vigour. Thank you very much.

More Resources

• 25th MINDEF PRIDE Day – iMATTER. iCAN. iWILL.

• Fact Sheet: MINDEF PRIDE Day 2012 Award Winners