Empowering Employees with a Digital Workplace at Toray Asia

About Toray Asia 

Toray Asia Pte Ltd (TAS) is a wholly- owned subsidiary of leading chemical manufacturer Toray Industries, Inc., which specialises in the manufacturing, processing and sales of three synthetic fibres - nylon, polyester and acrylic. Over the years, Toray Industries, Inc. has diversified its activities to cover a wider range of products, from performance chemicals and advanced composite materials to electronics and pharmaceuticals. As a Singapore-based regional headquarters, TAS supports the Toray group in the marketing and consulting of water treatment membranes in the Asia Pacific region. 

Identifying Constraints

To serve its ever-growing regional client base, employees at TAS have to be mobile and on-the-go, often working remotely on their laptops, smartphones and tablets. Having to scan and upload sales order documents or customer contracts to the server in office thus restricts their movement. Print outs sometimes go uncollected, resulting in paper wastages and the leakage of confidential information. Furthermore, several documents and brochures that were produced by different countries had to be localised to English in Singapore. 

Efficiency was further hindered by the large volume of contracts and documents that employees print and scan daily. As these files were kept in different formats and sizes, employees were expected to re-type documents in the right format. In addition, due to the low visibility over its print usage and environment, TAS was unable to charge accurate print costs to each department. With no dedicated IT support personnel and a fast-growing business, TAS needed a flexible IT partner who could help them manage, maintain and support the IT needs of its regional team.

- Mr Yuhendy Leevin, Assistant Manager, TAS

Fuelling Productivity

The transformation of print processes at TAS began with equipping employees with mobile printing. The ApeosPort-VI Color 5571 multi-function device’s (MFD) Near Field Communication (NFC) technology facilitates contactless printing, allowing employees to copy, scan and fax securely with a tap of their mobile devices. Through built-in cloud on-demand print capabilities, employees can remotely print from any computer or mobile device on any MFD. This eliminated the need for a dedicated print driver, enabling employees to print easily and securely even when away from the office. For enhanced security, FUJIFILM Business Innovation Singapore installed an extra ethernet to separate print networks for different user types. For instance, networks could be set up for internal user and visitor groups, or mission-critical and general office user groups. The flexibility of user groupings enables TAS to configure its print environment according to its business needs.

To secure TAS’s print activities, the Smart Work Gateway feature on the ApeosPort-VI MFDs protects the entire information management life cycle from document creation to setting access rights for document sharing. This enabled TAS to control the use, modification and distribution of its content. If a data leak occurs, TAS would be able to secure its data and identify the source of the leak easily. Greater cost control was also enabled through the different levels of user authentication – for instance, TAS may allow only authorised users to activate certain MFDs. Finally, print reports generated by the MFDs helped TAS account for print costs by department, thereby simplifying chargeback.

The administrative process of document reformatting was eliminated with ApeosPort-VI MFDs as scanned documents of any size – including receipts and order slips – can be seamlessly converted to editable Word and Excel files before uploading. Emailed or scanned data were also easily converted to TIFF, JPEG, DocuWorks, PDF, or XPS*1 formats, thus eliminating a large part of employees’ routine work. 

Managing, sorting and accessing documents on-the-go is now possible with DocuWorks 8, a cloud-based application that enabled more efficient document searching and editing. Routine tasks were processed swiftly. For instance, whenever an order request is received, TAS could respond promptly by checking the necessary information, preparing a proposal and distributing it to a sales representative, who could present the proposal on the spot with a tablet or smartphone. DocuWorks documents can also be annotated and shared for more efficient collaboration.

To relieve TAS the burden of managing its ever-changing IT demands, FUJIFILM Business Innovation Singapore recommended its IT Concierge Service (ICS), which is accredited with the Service Capability & Performance (SCP) Standards, a global benchmark for service excellence. ICS is a one-stop management solution that provides IT support services for every TAS employee. Print support was further enhanced through FUJIFILM Business Innovation Singapore’s Electronic Partnership Broadband (EP-BB) Service, which provides services that monitor, maintain and replenish printing supplies. This reduced the administrative workload for managing MFDs and provided TAS with convenient and hassle-free use of FUJIFILM Business Innovation devices.

Advancing the Business

ICS has taken the management of IT infrastructure off TAS’s shoulders, giving both management and staff a greater peace of mind. From laptop to VPN (Virtual Private Network) as well as email and file server maintenance, employees in TAS’s Singapore, India and South Korea offices can now enjoy support service turnaround of one working day instead of waiting for up to five working days. TAS also relies on the FUJIFILM Business Innovation team for technical expertise and advice on recommended hardware upgrade and implementation decisions. This has maximised the clockwork efficiency of TAS’s transformed print environment, enabling employees to focus on driving business results, reduce costs and enjoy minimal disruption.

Apart from conventional onsite and phone support, employees have also benefitted from a suite of online support services available through the EP-BB, which enables technical issues to be identified and resolved with greater ease and efficiency. Whenever consumables reached pre-determined levels, employees were notified, thus automating the supplies replenishment process, maximising productivity and minimising downtime for TAS.

Besides simplifying printing and scanning processes for TAS employees, the ApeosPort-VI Color 5571 has allowed them to print on a wide range of various paper types, including postcards and banners up to a size of 320 x 1200 mm, within a shorter amount of time. The management of large volumes of paperwork such as contracts and bills has also been made more efficient with the automatic scanning, conversion and storing of files. Searching for a document was not only made easier due to the automatic optical character recognition (OCR) processing of each scanned document, the ApeosPort-VI MFDs could also support multiple languages including Japanese, English, Chinese (simplified/traditional), Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese, thus easing the print process for different regional users. On the whole, TAS enjoyed cost savings of up to 15%.

- Mr Yuhendy Leevin, Assistant Manager, TAS