Maintenance Time Reduced by More than 50%, and System Stability Enhanced
As the leading capsule manufacturer in Taiwan, with products sold to Europe and the US, Dah Feng Capsule knows perfectly well the importance of IT capabilities to business operations. When carrying out its digital transformation project, therefore, Dah Feng Capsule uses the Application on Demand (AOD) services of Zero One Technology to reduce the workload on its IT Office so that the IT Office has more time to support the projects of other departments, helping the company to secure its leading position in the global market.

As the leading capsule manufacturer in Taiwan, with products sold to Europe and the US, Dah Feng Capsule knows perfectly well the importance of IT capabilities to business operations. When carrying out its digital transformation project, therefore, Dah Feng Capsule uses the Application on Demand (AOD) services of Zero One Technology to reduce the workload on its IT Office so that the IT Office has more time to support the projects of other departments, helping the company to secure its significant position in the global market.

Given the global trend of digital transformation, businesses in Taiwan have felt the pressure of having to accelerate the adoption of innovative technologies and developing innovative products and services in order not to be eliminated from the market. As the only capsule manufacturer in Taiwan that can produce both vegetable and acid-resistant vegetable empty hard capsules, Dah Feng Capsule began its digital transformation in 2020 and chose to use the AOD services of Zero One Technology to lower the workload on its IT Office and enhance the stability of user-end equipment so that the company could focus on innovative R&D to maintain its lead in the market.

“Dah Feng Capsule has had a great performance in the global market,” says Zhen-Xu Zhang, deputy manager of the IT Office of Dah Feng Capsule, “but are also aware that, given the rapid change in the business environment, we must optimize the constitution of the company and enhance our competitiveness through digital transformation. After the adoption of the AOD services, the load of infrastructure maintenance on the IT Office has been reduced, allowing the IT Office to have more time to respond to the needs of the Sales, R&D, and Production Departments by providing them with the necessary technical support and assistance, and this is of great help to lay the foundation for future development of the company.”

Established in 1967, Dah Feng Capsule has more than 50 years of experience in the industry, can provide safe and reliable high-quality empty hard capsule products and related technical services to the pharmaceutical and health product industries, and has agents in both the US and Europe. The company is dedicated to innovation in manufacturing processes, material development, technical services, and in market differentiation. It has passed PIC/S GMP (Pharmaceutical Inspection Convention and Cooperation Scheme, and Good Manufacturing Practice) certification, ISO9001 quality management system certification, and FSSC22000 food safety system certification, aiming to create an international capsule brand by continuing to strengthen its profession and services. To carry out the corporate vision of becoming a globally recognized, professionally leading capsule brand, Dah Feng Capsule has spared no effort in introducing various information technologies and investing in product and technological innovation. For example, the company created a virtual host platform years ago to maintain the stable operation of its production lines. As sales rose, however, the number of computers used in the offices and production lines approached 200, which significantly increased the system maintenance load on the IT Office. Whenever the ERP, EIP, or other application programs needed an update, the IT Office had to spend days installing patch programs on user-end computers, lest the application programs have issues with a network connection. So it was imperative to introduce a suitable tool as a solution.

“The 200 user-end computers were purchased at different times,” says Guang-Yu He, chief of the IT Office, “and therefore had different hardware specifications and Windows versions. The application programs in use also varied from one department to another. As a result, the patch software to be installed on each computer depends on the computer’s specifications, which adds to the burden of routine maintenance work. Now that the digital transformation plan of our company included optimization of the information structure, we began to search for a suitable solution on the market. After considering system compatibility and cost and completing POC verification, we decided to use the AOD services of Zero One Technology.

When it comes to simplifying the management of user-end equipment, many people will think of such conventional solutions as using a virtual desktop or a virtual application program. Those solutions, however, have quite a few limitations in use. For example, they can hardly be used in a production-line environment without such peripherals as scanners, special measuring instruments, or IP CAMs. As to solutions that are claimed to be usable in conjunction with peripherals, their phase-in cost is too high to be affordable to most enterprises. By contrast, the AOD services of Zero One Technology allow the existing peripherals of user-end computers to be used, do not require their users to change their habits of use, have a very reasonable cost, provide a diversity of license fee calculation methods, can help IT personnel simplify the management of application programs, and are therefore highly suitable for various enterprises.

The AOD services of Zero One Technology are a professional software data management platform that allows IT personnel to create private software markets in the simplest way and to achieve the objective of centralized control over software licenses and settings. An administrator can assign access permissions according to the attribute of each application program in order for employees to execute the software they need. In addition, the AOD services use patented application program streaming technology so that an employee can execute the software they need by way of the corresponding desktop shortcuts, which is truly convenient. “The AOD services only require an agent program (whose size is about 1 M) to be installed on each user-end computer,” says Guang-Yu He, “so the original performance of the system is not affected at all. There is also no need to change employees’ operation habits, so special education and training are not required.” Guang-Yu He adds, “In addition to outstanding software functions, Zero One Technology has provided excellent technical support services before, during, and after system installation. Their technical team rapidly answered our questions during POC verification, product deployment, and actual use of the AOD services so that we can confidently employ the new digital tool.”

Thanks to the joint efforts of the entire company, Dah Feng Capsule has completed the first-stage deployment of the AOD services of Zero One Technology in nearly 100 computers in an OA environment, which has greatly reduced the daily work required for equipment maintenance. According to Bo-Yu Chen, an engineer in the IT Office of Dah Feng Capsule, it used to take about a full day to prepare the computer of a new employee, the preparation including, among others, hardware preparation and installation of the operating system and application programs. Now, with the help of the AOD services of Zero One Technology, it takes only about half a day to complete the preparation, meaning 50% of the time is saved.

Guang-Yu He adds, “Whenever a new version of a software is released, all we have to do is to update the software on the software market enabled by the AOD services; there is no need to update the software in each computer. A considerable amount of time can be saved. Besides, if any colleague of mine needs to use a specific application program temporarily, all that needs to be done is to grant the colleague, through the software management tool and permission to access the software. The step of installing the software on a user-end computer is eliminated. This way, not only can precious time be saved, but also software licenses can be managed more precisely and efficiently. The benefit of adopting the AOD services of Zero One Technology has gradually emerged, enhancing the IT capabilities of Dah Feng Capsule significantly. The AOD services have become a digital tool indispensable to the IT Office. The IT Office is currently evaluating the second stage of the AOD services project, hoping to further deploy the services in production lines so as to make the entire IT structure more stable and reliable in support of the digital transformation project.”