depa Survey Finds Most Thai Industrial Adoption at Industry 2.0
Thailand's Digital Economy Promotion Agency published a 2024 industrial digital density survey conducted with UNIDO. It says 70% of the sample had adopted Industry 2.0 digital solutions, while product development, production management, customer relations and enterprise management still showed substantial low-level or fragmented use.
The survey covers nine sectors: food and agro-processing, textiles and apparel, electrical and electronics, automotive, machinery and parts, leather, paper and printing, rubber, and plastics. depa defines Industry 2.0 in this study as electronic systems such as online forms or electronic data exchange used to improve work efficiency, and reports movement from manual and analog practices recorded in 2021.
Detailed findings say 57% of the sample reached Industry 2.0 in supplier relations; 90.67% remained at a traditional-tool stage in product development, 87.33% used mainly simple automation in production-process management, 70% still used email for customer relations, and 69.33% used separate departmental systems for business management. These percentages describe the survey sample and should not be generalized to every Thai factory.
depa identifies limited technology awareness, shortages of skilled digital workers, constrained finance and small firms' limited investment readiness as continuing barriers, and urges industry to accelerate toward Industry 4.0 within five years. A company can respond by baselining its order, design, production, customer and departmental-system flows before selecting integrations, platforms or automation with measurable benefits.
Note: This article is based on the listed public sources and is not investment, legal, tax or compliance advice. Thailand tax, VAT, WHT, BOI, customs, e-Tax or PDPA interpretations and responsibilities must be reviewed for the actual project by qualified professionals in Thailand.