History of the SMF
The Singapore Manufacturing Federation (SMF), formerly known as the Singapore Manufacturers' Association (SMa), was first established in 1932. It grew from 17 founding members to 3,000 members currently. The change of name reflects the Federation’s dedication transform itself for the future, and its current status as the national organisation embracing the entire supply chain of manufacturing. The SMF has built up a strong tri-partite relationship with the government and the manufacturing industry.
The goals and role of the SMF in today’s industry
As the champion the Singapore manufacturing sector, our mission is to represent the interests of the Singapore manufacturing community and to drive its competitiveness and sustainable growth through serving industry-specific needs.
SMF is supported by 10 industry groups to serve diverse industry-specific needs, as well as 6 Centres of Excellence to offer our members a holistic approach towards improving competitiveness.
Industry developments and investment
The manufacturing sector in Singapore, which contributes towards approximately 20% of the country’s GDP, is doing relatively well compared to other countries, and has been going strong since the beginning of this year. There are also more SMEs venturing overseas and expanding their businesses. SMF launched the Business Expansion Programme last year to specially help companies looking to expand to Iskandar Malaysia and Riau Islands Indonesia.
The industry has also seen a shift from traditional manufacturing to manu-services which have been on the increase over the years.
Benefits of membership
SMF members enjoy a great variety of benefits:
- Up to 50% off seminars, conferences, workshops, networking and business matching events
- Exclusive rates for SMF-AIA welfare benefits packages for member companies and employees
- Up to 77.5% on trade exhibition administration fees and reimbursements of up to 50% for participation by eligible members under the International Marketing Assistance Programme (iMAP) from IE Singapore
- Up to 25% off the endorsement fees of manual Certificate of Origin (CO)
- Up to 50% off seminar marketing services
- Up to 10% discount on advertisements in SMF Connect magazine
- Up to 20% off rental rate for training rooms at SMF
- Up to 15% discount for selected workshops and training courses
- Up to 10% rebates on academic programmes from SMF Institute of Higher Learning
- Receive complimentary business advisory service
- Receive SMF’s annual Tradelink Directory and quarterly Connect magazine.
- Latest news and Industry ‘Hot’ topics
One of the key challenges facing the Singapore manufacturing industry is productivity. With the recent tightening of government policy on foreign manpower, productivity has, now more than ever, become pivotal in propelling economic growth. The manufacturing sector now is gravitating towards increasing productivity and leveraging on technologies and innovation to transform their businesses in order to keep up with the changing economy. SMF offers a great variety of productivity-driven programmes catered to companies to ‘upskill’ themselves.
In particular, SMF is focussing on Business Model Innovation (BMI) as a possible approach to help companies achieve sustainable growth. In line with this vision, SMF will be organising the Singapore Innovation and Productivity Conference (SIPC) 2014 that will promote BMI and focus on using BMI for sustained business growth. Research findings on BMI in Singapore will be shared and deliberated. In October 2014, an inaugural SMF Awards would be presented to inspire the community on transformational growth, and to raise awareness of the importance of innovation and productivity.
Playing its part to assist businesses to seek and adopt productivity solutions, SMF will be organising the Manufacturing Solutions Expo (MSE) from 8-10 October 2014. The event is targeted at manufacturing professionals, policy makers and business decision makers. MSE 2014 aims to showcase the best ideas, innovative technologies and cost effective manufacturing solutions to meet the growing needs of manufacturing companies.
