As manufacturing becomes more connected, automated and data-driven, engineers, technicians and commercial teams will need to combine industrial expertise with digital skills, data literacy and continuous learning.
By Atlas Copco
For decades, the skills expected of industrial employees were relatively easy to define. Engineers understood machines. Technicians knew how to diagnose faults. Service teams maintained equipment, while sales professionals understood products and customer requirements.
That is changing.
Industrial environments across Southeast Asia are becoming increasingly connected, automated and data-driven. Equipment can generate real-time performance data, remote monitoring can identify unusual behaviour before a breakdown occurs, and digital technologies can help anticipate problems. AI-supported systems can also turn operating data into recommendations on maintenance, uptime and energy use.
The next generation of engineers, technicians, service professionals and even commercial teams will therefore need more than mechanical knowledge or digital literacy in isolation. They will need to understand how the two work together.
The Industrial Worker Is Becoming a Hybrid Professional
Consider the changing role of a service engineer.
Historically, much of the job centred on inspecting equipment, identifying a physical problem and repairing or replacing the affected component. Those skills remain essential, but the information available to engineers is changing.
Connected industrial equipment can now provide data on operating conditions, energy consumption, maintenance requirements and potential abnormalities before a technician arrives on site.
For example, Atlas Copco Malaysia’s SMARTLINK monitoring technology captures live data from compressed air equipment and translates it into insights on uptime, energy efficiency and equipment health. Its remote diagnostics capabilities use smart algorithms and expert analysis to identify deviations at an early stage, supporting proactive troubleshooting.
This changes the skill set required of the person responsible for the machine.
Operations professionals need to interpret dashboards as well as understand production processes. Engineers need to understand sensors, connectivity and automation alongside mechanical systems. Technicians increasingly need to combine physical inspection with information gathered remotely.
The industrial worker is consequently becoming a hybrid professional, combining traditional technical expertise with digital capabilities.
Data Literacy Does Not Mean Turning Every Engineer Into a Data Scientist
There is a danger, however, in interpreting this shift as a requirement for every industrial employee to become a programmer or AI specialist.
What industrial companies increasingly need is applied data literacy: the ability to interpret information within the context of equipment, processes and customer operations.
Employees do not necessarily need to build AI models. They increasingly need to understand what digital information is telling them about equipment performance, maintenance, energy efficiency and customer operations.
The strongest industrial talent will not necessarily be those who know the most about software. It will be those who can connect digital information with engineering judgement.
Troubleshooting Has to Change Too
Technical education has traditionally rewarded knowing the correct answer. Modern industrial environments increasingly reward knowing how to investigate a problem.
As equipment becomes more complex and interconnected, employees will need stronger diagnostic and systems-thinking capabilities.
This is where human judgement becomes more valuable, not less.
AI and remote diagnostics can narrow the field of possibilities, but experienced people still need to understand the operating environment well enough to determine what happens next. Technology can provide more information, but people still need to interpret that information and make decisions based on the circumstances.
Universities and Technical Institutions Cannot Make the Transition Alone
Malaysia offers a useful illustration of the scale of this challenge.
The country’s industrial sector is moving towards more sophisticated and technology-intensive activity. Malaysia recorded RM131.3 billion in approved manufacturing investments in 2025, with the investments expected to create 109,950 new jobs. Nearly half, or 46.3%, of these positions fall within managerial and technical categories, highlighting the growing demand for higher-skilled industrial talent.
Talent development therefore needs to keep pace with industrial transformation.
Research by TalentCorp into the impact of AI, digitalisation and the green economy similarly found that approximately 620,000 employees across the sectors it studied could be significantly affected by technological and economic shifts. The research identified 60 emerging roles and mapped hundreds of skills required to support workforce transitions.
That requires deeper collaboration between employers, universities and technical institutions.
There are already examples of this model. Atlas Copco Malaysia’s Compressed Air Service Academy operates as a regional training hub for Southeast Asia, providing competency development for service employees, distributors and customer operations and maintenance teams.
Its training programmes combine equipment fundamentals with maintenance, troubleshooting, monitoring and control systems. Courses cover areas such as equipment operation, maintenance procedures, basic troubleshooting, energy saving and monitoring, showing how technical training can incorporate both traditional engineering knowledge and newer digital capabilities.
As companies expand teams in areas such as service, sales and marketing, these programmes point to a broader reality: industrial capability development is no longer confined to engineering departments.
Commercial Teams Need Technical Fluency Too
Industrial sales and marketing roles are becoming more technically demanding because the products themselves are increasingly sold as part of a broader operational solution.
A commercial team needs enough technical fluency to understand a customer’s operation, identify the problem and communicate how the technology addresses it.
The traditional boundary between the “technical” and “business” sides of an industrial company is therefore becoming less useful.
Sales professionals do not need to become engineers, just as engineers do not need to become salespeople. But both increasingly benefit from understanding how technology creates value for the customer.
This could mean understanding equipment performance, energy efficiency, automation, maintenance requirements or the operational impact of downtime.
Lifelong Learning Needs to Become Part of the Job
Perhaps the biggest change employers need to make is abandoning the idea that industrial education largely finishes when someone enters the workforce.
Training cannot be treated as an occasional intervention when new equipment arrives. It has to become part of the operating model.
That means giving employees time to learn, providing structured technical and digital training, and creating career pathways that reward employees for building skills beyond their original discipline.
This is particularly important as technologies continue to evolve. The skills required to operate and maintain industrial equipment today may not be the same as those required several years from now.
Continuous learning therefore needs to become part of how industrial careers are structured, rather than something employees are expected to pursue separately from their jobs.
Southeast Asia’s Industrial Advantage Will Depend on People as Much as Technology
Southeast Asia has spent much of the past decade positioning itself as an increasingly important manufacturing and industrial region.
The encouraging part is that technology does not eliminate the need for traditional industrial expertise. Instead, it can make that expertise more valuable when combined with new capabilities.
Consider the engineer who understands machinery and data.
The technician who can combine remote diagnostics with physical inspection.
The salesperson who understands both customer economics and industrial technology.
The operations professional who knows when to trust an algorithm and when to question it.
These are the hybrid capabilities likely to define Southeast Asia’s next generation of industrial talent.
The question for employers and educators is whether workforce development can evolve quickly enough to produce them.
As industrial technology continues to advance, the competitive advantage may not simply belong to companies with the most sophisticated equipment or software. It may increasingly belong to those with people capable of understanding, applying and adapting that technology.
