SINGAPORE – Singapore furniture brand Star Living opened its new high-tech, seven-storey headquarters in Sungei Kadut on Tuesday.

The new building houses its corporate office, fully automated warehouse and furniture showrooms.

Spanning 19,050 sq m, the warehouse makes use of the Internet of Things – a network that facilitates communication between the devices connected to it – to speed up and streamline operations, and increase operational efficiency and storage capacity by 50 per cent.

The company has a specialised warehouse management system, autonomous-guided vehicles and mobile shuttles.

The autonomous-guided vehicles use sensors to navigate and pick up heavy furniture throughout the facility, while the motorised mobile shuttles transport the items across the warehouse space.

With no need for human intervention, this enhances workers’ safety and frees them up to do other things.

“Managing a furniture warehouse on such a large scale requires heavy manpower and labour,” Ms Xu Xue Ting, group corporate and retail director of Star Living, said. “Most of our workers end up doing mundane tasks, such as sorting, transporting and finding products.”

Star Living, which started in 1981, offers a variety of household products across seven brands under Star International, and handles the entire furniture life cycle from design to manufacturing, retailing and exporting.

The automated moving process should lead to a shorter customer wait from order to delivery.

Reducing the time taken for operations and redeploying employees to do other things is important given today’s tight labour market, said Ms Low Yen Ling, who is the Minister of State for Trade and Industry and Culture, Community and Youth.

Ms Low, the guest of honour at the headquarters’ opening, added that more companies in Singapore have increased efforts to use technology to increase productivity.

Besides improving efficiency, it is also important for Singapore companies to expand into the international market, given the small domestic market here, said Ms Low.

The development of the warehouse was supported by Enterprise Singapore’s Enterprise Development Grant, which supports projects that help companies upgrade, innovate and grow their businesses.