Big gains from workflow automation

EARLIER this year, employees of Tacam Steel - a homegrown steel door manufacturer - had to contend with a mammoth Excel spreadsheet every time a new client or project came on board. If a client wanted 2,000 steel doors made - as did Changi Airport for Terminal 4, recently - the spreadsheet would sport over 2,700 rows (with one row per door), and easily 100 columns.

Says Tacam Steel general manager, Brian Wong: "It's not like the 2,000 doors are of the same type or size. There are many variations per door, such as the materials used, what kind of handle it has, or whether it's soundproof or fire-rated."

In fact, in the Terminal 4 project, the resulting spreadsheet sported over 2,700 rows.

The gigantic spreadsheet would then be passed through different departments within Tacam Steel - starting from salespeople, to technical drawing specialists, to inventory managers, to the billing team - all for just one pr…