Selling the value of quality
JKR: Water filters and a water tank at JKR at Tasek Lama in the capital. Picture: BT/Saifulizam
Saturday, October 11, 2008
ONE of the main contributions to a company's success has to do with quality, though few companies take quality seriously, others make a living out of providing and selling instruments to improve quality. Mectech Engineering Sdn Bhd, is a mechanical engineering company that specialises in instrumentation such as sensors and so on.
The company's main client, like most companies in Brunei, is the government, but specifically to the Water Department and the Department of Drainage and Sewers. "We first started out with the telemetry system, which links all the pumping stations in brunei to a main control centre, and this not only helps the government in monitoring their resources, but it also helps it to be more efficient," says Kaewen Tan the project and application manager of Mectech Engineering.
He said that before, the government would send a team of people everyday to manually check the stations to see if everything is working well. "Now if there is any problem going on in the whole of Brunei, they can see it right away on the computer screen. This would also be more cost efficient," he says.
Tan adds that quality plays a big part in his work because the instruments being supplied, also monitor the quality of the water that is being pumped into homes. "The water checks have to follow the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards, but the difference is that before, everything was done the hard way, manually. People are taking readings every half hour to one hour and this can be stream line in a way that they can do all this and everything can be monitored from the computer," he says.
Tan says that quality is one of the aspects of his job that adds value to his company, "Quality is something that varies from one person to another, but luckily for us, in instrumentations, it is very easy with steps and instructions from the manufacturer". He adds that quality in installation is one of the key areas to make an instrument work properly as it eliminates 50 per cent of the problem.
But what makes Tan such an expert on quality? "A lot of it comes from experience, I was the technical person in-charge of the Asia-Pacific region from a mechanical engineering company and gave training all over the region," he says. Tan said that from that experience he realised the need to have a company that can not just supply instruments but also commission, install and maintain the instruments.
"We found that the instruments would be sourced from overseas and with no specialists in Brunei to install and maintain, the specialists from the manufacturers had to be brought in and these are all extra costs that make the products expensive. It is a lot of money that is wasted because the products that come in do not even get their full product cycle," says Tan. "Let's say the sensor being brought in can work for four to five years and then it breaks down, nobody knows why or how, all they do is throw it away and get a new one," he adds.
"This is where we come in where we provide the instruments, we have specialists who can maintain the instruments and fix it all within 24 hours of the breakdown and that is a promise," he says. Tan says that starting out his business three years ago and proposing this change in the water systems was not difficult, "the government knows that this change is inevitable", he says.
One of the on going challenges that Tan faces has to do with the mindset of the people in Brunei, "People in Brunei still ultimately look for prices, they want the cheapest and they don't care how long the product lasts and what services are back up with it and so on," he says. He added that what he tries to do to overcome this is to just come up with a right plan on how to get the products to the people and how to communicate with them properly, most importantly, how he can help them.
"Customers always know what they want but it's how they can integrate these products to make their jobs more efficient and simple," he said. Believe it or not, Tan fell into the engineering industry purely by luck. This techie enthusiast says that by pure chance he was approached by a college representative at the Sunway College in Malaysia and asked him if he would be interested in mechanical engineering.The Brunei Times
The company's main client, like most companies in Brunei, is the government, but specifically to the Water Department and the Department of Drainage and Sewers. "We first started out with the telemetry system, which links all the pumping stations in brunei to a main control centre, and this not only helps the government in monitoring their resources, but it also helps it to be more efficient," says Kaewen Tan the project and application manager of Mectech Engineering.
He said that before, the government would send a team of people everyday to manually check the stations to see if everything is working well. "Now if there is any problem going on in the whole of Brunei, they can see it right away on the computer screen. This would also be more cost efficient," he says.
Tan adds that quality plays a big part in his work because the instruments being supplied, also monitor the quality of the water that is being pumped into homes. "The water checks have to follow the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards, but the difference is that before, everything was done the hard way, manually. People are taking readings every half hour to one hour and this can be stream line in a way that they can do all this and everything can be monitored from the computer," he says.
Tan says that quality is one of the aspects of his job that adds value to his company, "Quality is something that varies from one person to another, but luckily for us, in instrumentations, it is very easy with steps and instructions from the manufacturer". He adds that quality in installation is one of the key areas to make an instrument work properly as it eliminates 50 per cent of the problem.
But what makes Tan such an expert on quality? "A lot of it comes from experience, I was the technical person in-charge of the Asia-Pacific region from a mechanical engineering company and gave training all over the region," he says. Tan said that from that experience he realised the need to have a company that can not just supply instruments but also commission, install and maintain the instruments.
"We found that the instruments would be sourced from overseas and with no specialists in Brunei to install and maintain, the specialists from the manufacturers had to be brought in and these are all extra costs that make the products expensive. It is a lot of money that is wasted because the products that come in do not even get their full product cycle," says Tan. "Let's say the sensor being brought in can work for four to five years and then it breaks down, nobody knows why or how, all they do is throw it away and get a new one," he adds.
"This is where we come in where we provide the instruments, we have specialists who can maintain the instruments and fix it all within 24 hours of the breakdown and that is a promise," he says. Tan says that starting out his business three years ago and proposing this change in the water systems was not difficult, "the government knows that this change is inevitable", he says.
One of the on going challenges that Tan faces has to do with the mindset of the people in Brunei, "People in Brunei still ultimately look for prices, they want the cheapest and they don't care how long the product lasts and what services are back up with it and so on," he says. He added that what he tries to do to overcome this is to just come up with a right plan on how to get the products to the people and how to communicate with them properly, most importantly, how he can help them.
"Customers always know what they want but it's how they can integrate these products to make their jobs more efficient and simple," he said. Believe it or not, Tan fell into the engineering industry purely by luck. This techie enthusiast says that by pure chance he was approached by a college representative at the Sunway College in Malaysia and asked him if he would be interested in mechanical engineering.The Brunei Times
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