NUS business graduate, 29, shares how she rose up the ranks at Schneider Electric

After graduating from the National University of Singapore’s Business School, Isdiyanah Puteri joined French energy and automation giant Schneider Electric as part of their graduate programme.

As a Regional Smart Factory Leader, she was responsible for helping Schneider Electric’s nine factories in Asia-Pacific use automation and analytics to improve labour productivity and quality.

The 29-year-old has since progressed to a new role as a Global Engineer-to-Order Control Tower Leader.

This interview with Isdiyanah was first published on the Economic Development Board’s website in December 2024.

By Isdiyanah Puteri

I studied Business Administration in the National University of Singapore 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.

Learning on-the-job and being deployed to Thailand during Covid-19

The skills required at work 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 worked and what didn'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.

What does a regional smart factory leader do?

As a regional smart factory leader, my job is to facilitate the deployment and adoption of technologies and automation within Schneider Electric’s smart factory sites.

The goal is to help them become more productive, efficient, reliable and sustainable.

My day-to-day duties can vary. 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. This also helps me determine if there is technical issue or enhancement request that needs to be addressed.

I also take part in meetings 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 job include serving as an ambassador at the Innovation Hub, where I share some of our solutions with customers and visitors.

What gives me meaning at work

Seeing how my work can improve the processes within our sites, and directly benefit the engineers and team that I’m working with, gives me a sense of satisfaction.

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.

Watch her share about her experience at Schneider Electric here:

Top image from EDB/YouTube video.