Case Study – Industry 4.0 in Suofeiya Furniture

I attended the Alibaba Global Course at Sentosa, Singapore in April 2018. There was a series of talks and demonstration of technologies. One of the speaker is from this company – Suofeiya (索菲亚). He mentioned how technologies are changing the way businesses are being conducted.

Suofeiya provides customers with custom furniture solutions. It is a role which is played by interior designers with their contractors in Singapore.

I just did my home renovation last year and the current state process are as follows:

Step 1: Visit Interior Designer shop with the floor plan.

Step 2: Interior Designer will show you some photos and customer will select the materials. The materials are quite difficult to select as you have a 1 inch by 1 inch sample, and you try to imagine how it fits in the environment.

Step 3: The Interior Designer will go down to confirm on the measurements.

Step 4: Interior Designer will dispatch the dimensions to the factory for them to manufacture. This step maybe missing sometimes if the Interior Designer do not relay the information correctly to the factory.

Step 5: The contractor will come down to install the custom furniture.

Let’s take a look at how Suofeiya approach towards this current state process with the video below.

Using digital technologies, Suofeiya approach the custom furniture process differently as below:

Step 1: Select the furniture, layout and colour through the use of 3D CAD and Augmented Reality technologies

Step 2: Interior Designer visit house to confirm

Step 3: Visit Interior Designer shop to select the materials, by feeling it.

Step 4: Interior Designer will dispatch the dimensions to the factory for them to manufacture based on BOM information. The factories can be located anywhere in the world.

Step 5: The contractor will come down to install the custom furniture.

It is still a 5-step process by the sequence is different. Upfront, customers will be able to have a good visual on what type of furniture, the colour and layout using 3D CAD technologies. The visit by the Interior Designer and to the shop is a further confirmation on the validity of the design, and the look and feel of the materials. Customers will do less measuring work as these are done using the smart devices technologies. Interior Designer also do higher value adding work of looking at the design and advising on the materials based on the environment. Industry 4.0 technologies are showcase at the second half where there’s WIP-level traceability and fully custom solution for the customers.