Smc director: The govt has a long history of cheating entrepreneurs and businesses

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

source: http://therealsingapore.com/content/...and-businesses

Post date:
24 Jan 2015 - 8:23pm

Background Story: Mindef Claims Inventor's Patent is Invalid and Pushes Blame to Its Vendor

A few friends had messaged me privately advising me not to “incite anti-government sentiments.”

I wish to explain that my passion to support Dr Ting today is the result of having experienced a similar pain.

In 1993, Chartered Materials & Services Pte Ltd. (CMS) was planning to build an automated storage retrieval system (ASRS) for their premise located in JTC owned Clementi Distripark at 5, Clementi Loop. My company, SMC had built the ASRS at 7, Clementi Loop known then as Scandinavia Warehouses Pte Ltd, sharing a fence with CMS.

SMC was invited to tender.

In 1994, CMS was renamed to Singapore Technologies Logistics and becomes part of Singapore Technologies Industrial Corporation Group (STIC).

Ref. http://www.stlogs.com/corporate/milestones/

SMC devoted weeks, months and years of our time working with ST Logistics (STL) throughout the tender. We flew teams of software, mechanical and electrical engineers from Korea to Singapore to attend meetings. The more we worked with them, the greater confidence we had to be awarded the job. Our company in Korea had designed and built numerous facilities for the navy and army in South Korea to handle heavy ammunitions, equipment and very small spare parts. STL asked if SMC could visualize ourselves building at least 10 ASRS facilities for them not just in Singapore but overseas as well. Apart from working on the tender for their Clementi Loop facility planned to be a third party warehouse, STL also invited SMC to submit our proposals for numerous other industries like pharmaceutical, petrochemical, food and beverage and others. Since we shared the same fence as STL, their management team even discussed the possibility of building a bridge to link no. 5 and no. 7 to make it easier for SMC’s maintenance guys to access for trouble-shooting. All in all, it seemed like a sure deal for SMC.

SMC had provided STL whatever they had requested, sharing all the relevant case studies of SMC’s installations globally. SMC provided designs for stacker cranes, rack structures, pallets, warehouse management systems, material flow concepts, visualization of screen shots in our proposals catering to all the different store-in and store out scenarios.

STL’s management visited our head office in Korea along with a few other STIC engineers to tour our manufacturing plants and customers’ facilities.

As the tender process was getting long and costly for us, we repeatedly asked when their final decision could be reached. A different reason was given each time and we just (stupidly) continued to satisfy their endless requests for revisions in designs, drawings and price proposals.

After a long period of silence, one day we were informed that STL would like to appoint SMC to be their project consultant company. SMC was asked to accept a fee of SGD 50,000 for all the work put in the past few years. If we were agreeable STL would prepare the Memorandum of Understanding. So we asked them what happened to the tender opened in 1993 since it was the tender SMC responded to be a turn-key solution provider. SMC is not just a project consultant company but a manufacturer, designer and provider of turn-key solutions (www.smck.com). STL already knew from the start and they were the ones who told us they wanted to work with us because there are not many good crane makers in the world with an entire team of software/IT engineers under the same roof.

STL never gave a reasonable explanation but merely said their management had made some changes to their decision-making. The tender was opened in the name of CMS in 1993 but CMS no longer existed so it meant there was no tender to discuss about.

Soon after, we found out from Zulkifli Baharudin (a former NMP) then the General Manager at Scandinavia Warehouses Pte Ltd that STL has all this while been making use of SMC to obtain all the information needed for their own benefit since STL was already in the logistics business serving the defence and government sectors.

SMC has fed STL with so much information, we felt used and violated and we were bled so dry. We were called names by people in the industry. In those days, there was no internet yet. We had to use the fax machine to rectify large engineering drawings. We cut up A1 drawings into A4 sizes to fax between Korea and Singapore to communicate with our engineers. SMC Singapore office had chalked up thousands of dollars of Singtel bills each month for at least 18 months after responding to a tender that was actually just a ploy to trick vendors like SMC from the beginning.

When it was evident that they had started constructing the automated warehouse, numerous architects and contractors involved in their project came forward one by one to tell us how they had cloned our design and concept. When STL’s facility was opened to show off to the public, SMC was the only party that was denied entry to their premise. Before the construction started, our teams of engineers were there on site to calculate the floor loads to match our high-rise rack structure. We had already calculated their throughput and other data all tailor-made to their needs and even provided simulation systems to them showing how all the robots were going to move. It was so painful to go to the office each day for the next few years passing by No. 5 Clementi Loop. When SMC’s late President Mr Cho called me to start a law suit, we were advised not to waste our time and money as CMS no longer existed, the name had been changed to ST Logistics with new team of people running so there was no way for us to put up a case.

Anyway, I can say that the pain is so deep; the wound is still raw. SMC Singapore was financially made to suffer the brunt of the entire time while being made use of by STL. As the only Singaporean involved in the communication with STL from the start to the end, I felt deeply ashamed and responsible. We stopped receiving financial support from our head office in Korea because it had no more confidence to exist in Singapore. My co-workers in Korea remarked they would never have expected a Singapore government-owned agency to cheat this way.

I didn’t receive a stable income for close to three years, until we managed to secure contracts on our own merit with large pulp & paper companies, a food and beverage manufacturer in Indonesia, Kian Joo Can Group in Vietnam and Malaysia, IKEA for two facilities in China, Reliance Industries in India, state-owned Petrobras in Brazil.

My action does not make me a lesser Singaporean. My main objective is to let the public know that this case involving Dr Ting vs the MINDEF has brought back very painful memories for me. Today, I am yelling to the Singapore government that I am so disgusted and ashamed that you have repeated this act time and time again to many entrepreneurs and individuals who sincerely wish to be committed to growing and flourishing together with Singapore.

So my friends, please do not try to teach me what to write or not to write, what to say or not to say, what to feel or not to feel. The reason is, you will never know how it feels, till it happens to you.

Dr Ting and I have not kept in touch for close to 2 years. The day after I created the group to support him, Dr Ting messaged to thank me. It was then that we resumed communication and it was then that I learnt that his dad had passed away last June.

Please don’t tell me that you had your fair share of similar experiences. I am sure you did not. If you have experienced a similar pain of this scale, there is no way that you could still sit quietly and pretend that the Singapore government did no wrong. Yes, I need to emphasize it is not just the MINDEF since this involves the entire judiciary system in Singapore as well.

I am not a lesser Singaporean today. I am a Singaporean who really cares about her fellow citizens and the next generation's welfare. I love my country and I want to be able to continue boasting about the sunny island that is being governed by a team of experts who believes in sheer hard work, honesty and integrity.

My friends, do remember, “The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.” ― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

Ai Lin Lim-Eng

*Article first appeared on https://www.facebook.com/notes/ai-li...ingaporean-who...



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