Foxconn Industrial Internet’s Vietnam revenue jumps 83% on automation, digitalization: CEO

Foxconn Industrial Internet (FII), a unit of Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, saw revenue from its new-technology applications in Vietnam rise 83% in the past fiscal year while headcount increased only 20%, driven by automation and digitalization.

The information was revealed by Liu Zongchang, rotating CEO of Foxconn Industrial Internet, at the Autumn Economic Forum held on Wednesday in Ho Chi Minh City.

The Foxconn executive said that labour productivity at its Vietnam operations has improved by more than 50% in recent years, breaking with the country’s traditional reliance on low-cost and labor-intensive manufacturing.

FII divides its manufacturing into three groups: system integration and assembly, modules, and components, Liu said. He added that its smart factories, which apply high levels of automation and digital tools, have significantly lifted output per worker, particularly in module production.

Digital planning and supplier-synchronization tools have also reduced inventory days by over 35% in Vietnam, cutting costs across system-integration and assembly operations, the executive noted.

Foxconn’s Huu Nghi 2 plant in the northern province of Bac Ninh is currently the only facility in Vietnam recognized as a “Lighthouse Factory” by the World Economic Forum (WEF), a designation for advanced smart-manufacturing sites.

Speaking at the event, Tran Anh Tu, deputy director general of the Department of Information, Technology and Industry under the Ministry of Science and Technology, said that the shift to Industry 4.0 technologies is no longer experimental. However, with most domestic firms being small and medium-sized enterprises, he recommended that a phased approach, starting with data digitization before moving to automation and AI, is necessary.

Nguyen Da Quyen, co-head of the Smart Manufacturing and Global Supply Chain Center at the Ho Chi Minh City-based Center for Industry 4.0 Revolution (C4IR), said around 60% of SMEs are still in the early stages of digitization. Fragmented data and widespread reliance on spreadsheets, with “Excel still king,” remain major bottlenecks, she said.

To support local businesses’ digital transformation, the Vietnamese government is fine-tunning legal rules via piloting a sandbox mechanism for new technologies while tapping the national technology innovation fund as a financial leverage for firms, Tu said.