SICK Product Center Asia gets SBR International Business Awards for Electronics

It successfully produced German quality products for the Asian market.

SICK, a leading manufacturer of intelligent sensors and sensor solutions for industrial applications, faced fierce price competition in Asia market during the late 1990s.

With respect to this, a strategic project was started in 2009 to develop and produce German quality new sensor products in Asia for the Asian market. In line with this initiative, SICK established its Regional Product Center for its Asia business and consequently bagged the International Business Awards for the Electronics category at the Singapore Business Review International Awards 2017. Jack Goh, Trevor Stewart and Camille Chua accepted the award on the company's behalf.

As part of the initiative's goals, all human resources and raw materials are obtained from the regions, with Singapore as the R&D center with procurement and Product Management functions, whereas the manufacturing plant has been established in a low-cost region in Malaysia.

SICK actively recruited suitable staff and actively developed key suppliers and implemented organizational structure and processes to develop their Regional Product center. During the first five years, there has been intensive training and coaching from the company's Germany headquarters, which has resulted in the joint development of 13 new products that were all successfully launched and are generating very good sales results.

Technologies developed include optical electronic, inductive and magnetic, RFID and Laser products for industrial applications. SICK's center has grown from four persons to 250 with more than S$50 million in sales revenue in 2016 over a short period of seven years. These sales are from products developed and manufactured locally, and has helped the SICK brand to move from a low sensor player to one of the top three sensor brands in Asia.

The SBR International Business Awards was held on June 8, 2017 at the Conrad Centennial Singapore.

This year's nominations were judged by a panel consisting of Ng Jiak See, executive director and head of corporate finance advisory at Deloitte Singapore & Southeast Asia; Choo Eng Chuan, ASEAN markets leader and partner, international and corporate tax services at Ernst & Young Solutions LLP; Toh Kim Teck, assurance partner at Foo Kon Tan LLP; and Henry Tan, managing director at NEXIA TS.

Check out the event photos during the awards night here.

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