A*Star – A real sense of a technology revolution

Posted on by

A*Star has developed a monitoring system, which has the capacity to transmit the real-time vibration data from construction sites wireless, allowing workers to fetch data in the office itself, an adaptation of Internet of Things (IoT).

Astar– A Real Sense Of A Technology Revolution

Earlier, FOSTA Pte Ltd, a high-tech fiber optic sensing instrumentation and monitoring company, which monitors noise and vibration at the construction site, had to deploy workers every week to manually collect data and check the safety standards. This whole process posed potential danger, as even if the noise and vibration levels exceed safety level, the data collected manually was not timely enough to generate the required alerts.

In 2013, FOSTA approached A*Star through its Technology Adoption Programme (TAP) to develop a solution for collecting noise and vibration in real-time. A*Star’s Institute for Infocomm Research, developed an internet-based system that allows access to on-site information through off-site computers and has the capacity to send information to company computers over the internet.

The new and advance technology is allowing FOSTA, to save almost 90 percent of its manpower and reduce 50 percent of its processing time, while allowing the company to achieve 20 percent increase in revenue. Now, as data can be retrieved in office only, the vehicles, which were earlier used to ferry workers from work-site, are being used for sales activities. The whole process allowed FOSTA to reduce its manpower cost and processing time considerably.

According to Mr. Dennis Song, Managing Director of FOSTA, ‘the only way to maximize profit in any industry is to minimize costs’. For companies that provide services, manpower takes a huge portion of cost and technology adoption significantly reduce both manpower cost and processing time; helping small companies to go a long way.

A*Star which is currently emphasizing on promoting use of technology in SME’s , believes that FOSTA success story is a good example for companies to use advance technology for productivity growth. They are also planning to enhance the current IoT technology, to allow multiple users generate customized reports and alerts. The whole features will be added into a ready-to-go (RTG) package by the end of the year, to allow more SME’s take benefit from it.

Technology is the backbone of the modern business and adopting technology in small and medium enterprise will surely help them in catching up with the global counterparts.