Isdiyanah Puteri, 28, is responsible for helping French energy and automation giant Schneider Electric’s nine factories in Asia-Pacific use automation and analytics to improve labour productivity and quality. After graduating from the National University of Singapore’s Business School, she joined Schneider Electric as part of the Schneider Graduate Program.
 

1. What is your role exactly and can you describe what a regular day at work is like?

My job is to facilitate the deployment and adoption of technologies and automation within Schneider Electric’s smart factory sites with the goal of helping them become more productive, efficient, reliable and sustainable.

My day-to-day can vary depending on the area of focus I’m working on. A big part of my job is reviewing the dashboards of core manufacturing software and maintenance management systems to ensure that we have the right data quality. It also helps me determine if there is any technical issue or enhancement request that needs to be addressed.

There are meetings as well to evaluate processes and business use cases so that we can ensure we are generating the right return on investments when it comes to the technologies we adopt. We often come together to discuss how we can drive analytics and innovation projects within our sites. Other aspects of my day-to-day include serving as an ambassador at the Innovation Hub, where I share some of our solutions with customers and visitors.

2. How did you end up in this role at Schneider Electric, and what have you learnt through your experience at the company?

I studied Business Administration in NUS before I joined Schneider Electric as a fresh graduate under the Schneider Graduate Program. I was greatly impressed by Schneider Electric’s mission statement to be a digital partner for efficiency and sustainability after attending a career fair and speaking to a graduate trainee from the company.

The skills required for this role were initially a bit of a mismatch from what I studied. I was rotated around various supply chain functions which I had little exposure to back in university but I learnt on-the-job and from subject matter experts. After taking on a few digital projects and working with different types of software, I realised I had to understand Structured Query Language (SQL) better in order to know how to manipulate and use the databases we have to our advantage. This knowledge also helped me to communicate better with developers.

On top of that, it was important for me to understand UI/UX design when it came to developing new apps for our global smart factory sites. Stakeholder management was a crucial skill as well, though it required a lot of trial and error on my side to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Being deployed to one of Schneider Electric’s factories in Thailand back in 2020 during the pandemic was eye-opening, as I had the chance to interact with shopfloor engineers to better understand various processes.

3. What’s most meaningful to you about your role?

Seeing how my work can improve the processes within our sites, and directly benefit the engineers and team that I’m working with. This has resulted in cost savings, and improved usage and adoption of tools by my production colleagues.

My role has also given me the opportunity to work closely with subject matter experts as well, particularly in ensuring that processes are lean before we adopt digitisation. This is something that I’m grateful for as it’s not usually the norm for us to have such direct access to these experts.

By driving our smart factories to become more technologically advanced, my work at Schneider Electric helps to raise the capabilities and competitiveness of the manufacturing industry, which is a core part of Singapore’s economy.
 

Isdiyanah took on a new role as Global Engineer-to-Order (ETO) Control Tower Leader, where she handles a programme focusing on supply chain digital twin in end-February 2024.