Chuan Lian Enterprise Co Ltd (全聯實業), which operates the nation’s largest supermarket chain, Pxmart (全聯福利中心), yesterday announced a five-year cooperation plan with IBM, focusing on enterprise transformation.
The plan is designed to help Pxmart reach its long-term goal of boosting annual sales to more than NT$200 billion (US$6.62 billion) by the end of 2020 from the NT$70 billion recorded last year, while increasing the number of stores from 700 to 1,000 by the end of 2017.
“The cooperation with IBM will raise our store quality in the short run, while helping us get a better understanding of our customers,” Chuan Lian president Hsu Chung-jen (徐重仁) told a media briefing.
Chuan Lian general manager Tony Tsai (蔡篤昌) said IBM, which has transformed to a total solution provider and consultant, will help integrate and standardize Chuan Lian’s information technology (IT) system as the first step of the plan.
The integrated system may lead Chuan Lian to better control inventories of dried food and fresh food and more systematically collect data on the group’s 7.5 million members.
Following the rise of new media and social media, analyzing membership data is more important for a company, Tsai said, adding that Chuan Lian may set a more accurate expansion plan and sell certain products in certain outlets according to member preferences.
Hsu, former president of President Chain Store Corp (PCSC, 統一超商), has unveiled many revolutionary ideas for Pxmart since joining Chuan Lian in January.
Hsu has also led a number of his former colleagues at PCSC to Chuan Lian, including Tsai, former general manager of President Drugstore Business Corp (統一生活事業) — which owns Taiwan’s second-largest drugstore, Cosmed (康是美) — and Chuan Lian marketing director Liu Hong-cheng (劉鴻徵), the former head of 7net, PCSC’s online shopping portal.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”