Achieving Real-Time Cross-Border Asset Visibility
Panasonic’s Digital Inventory Tracking System for Smart Asset Management
Panasonic Industrial Devices Singapore Pte. Ltd. (PIDSG) specialises in the manufacturing and sales of electronic components and devices such as polymer capacitors, inductors, resistors and varistors. With factories in Singapore and Batam running about 6000 high-value fixed assets including equipment and devices, asset management and tracking poses a challenge especially across the two countries. This includes management of stock-take, locations, warranties, maintenance, ownership and reporting, among others.
PIDSG used to manage their fixed assets manually via Excel by scanning 2D barcodes, a time-consuming and tedious manual process prone to human errors, lacking real-time visibility and requiring line-of-sight barcode detection. To mitigate these issues, PIDSG approached SIMTech for a digital solution and an RFID upgrade.
SIMTech has a strong record of helping companies with digitalisation for productivity. One of these solutions is an inventory tracking system, which allows companies to effectively tag and manage assets, as well as track and perform lifecycle management using Auto-ID technology. This technology has been adopted by over 500 companies in inventory and asset management and tracking.
In developing an inventory tracking system for PIDSG, SIMTech analysed their requirements and identified the right auto-ID technology for appropriate asset tagging. An interface was designed and built to be compatible with other business systems through predefined excel file interfaces to ensure data synchronisation and integrity. PIDSG adopted 2 licenses of the systems and implemented them in Singapore and Batam to manage assets respectively. Best practices were also developed to address challenges in tagging, scanning, offline modes and graphical map displays based on PIDSG’s requirements.
Since the cross-border implementation of the digital inventory tracking system, PIDSG has been able to automate and manage their asset tracking with real-time visibility. Each stock-take activity is now more efficient and has improved accuracy.
“By leveraging SIMTech’s Inventory Tracking System (ITS), we have enhanced the safeguarding of our company’s assets. Through the implementation of RFID tags, we have successfully reduced the time required for stocktaking by 50%, while also achieving a 40% reduction in the overall duration of our end-to-end physical count activities. Real-time tracking of stocktaking tasks enables us to take prompt actions as needed. We anticipate SIMTech’s continued customisation of the application to cater to our dual-site operations, further augmenting our productivity gains.” – Mr Yi Chengtao, IT General Manager, Panasonic Industry Devices Singapore Pte Ltd
PIDSG is currently working with SIMTech to extend and scale up their inventory tracking system.
For enquiries, please contact:
Xu Chi
Group Manager, Smart Urban Logistics (SUL), Resilient Value Chain Division
Email: cxu@simtech.a-star.edu.sg