By Karamjit Singh

Published in The Edge Malaysia on the week of 21st September 2009

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“Not many had heard of our company,” acknowledges Liew Choon Lian, chairman & CEO of MDT Group of companies which is in the radio frequency identification device (RFID) sector. However, that changed when its subsidiary MDT Innovations (MDTi), an MSC-status company, was awarded the MSC Malaysia Apicta 2007 Prime Minister’ Best of the Best Award for its RFID Reader Module.

Not only did MDT win the overall prize, three of its other submissions were also winners in three other categories in the same year, namely Best of Communications, Best of Security and Best of Research & Development for RFID related applications. This was enough for it to get noticed locally even though it was playing in a specialized niche that is not well known in Malaysia.

Prior to this, MDT was already well known in the Asian RFID sector, thanks to Liew’s active participation with various RFID bodies in the region and his collaborations with Japanese and Chinese companies in this sector.

The company’s main business activities include component engineering, system design, software development, and application solutions in RFID, advanced display devices and mobile information technologies.

MDTi’s core RFID activities are in design, R&D, implementation, and maintenance of RFID key components and system integration. Liew says the company’s engineering team focuses on developing full- fledged RFID key components, comprising RFID inlays, tags, readers/ scanners, antennae, and software tools. It is one of the pioneers in the passive 2.45GHz RFID systems. It already has two patents to its name, which were granted in Japan and China. The same patent application is pending from the Malaysian patent authority, MyIPO. It is also applying for four more patents.

He says that since winning the Malaysian Apicta award, the management has more confidence, staff morale has gone up and the company has gained regional exposure as the company builds its overseas revenue base. Local sales have risen too with its products, the Vehicle Autogate Security System (VASS), tested in 30 pilot sites. This particular product won an Apicta Merit Award for 2006. Two live sites are at the MegaSteel cement plant in Banting, Selangor where VASS is used to monitor trucks, while YTL Cement is using RFID to track its cement transported by rail.

Liew acknowledges that while there are many other RFID players around, MDT’s strength is the extremely high quality of its products coupled with cost advantage. “Our RFID readers and chips consume very low power but deliver great performance in terms of distance and cost a lot less than our competitors in China or those from the West,” he says. He is bullish on the revenue growth for 2010, especially if a few overseas projects come through. Currently, revenue comes from Japan, China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia, with the Philippines and Vietnam promising potentially large deals.
Liew says with only a small team of 10 – almost all software engineers – MDT can manage the new business because the manufacturing is outsourced to companies in Taiwan and China. “We are very good at leveraging our partners capabilities,” he adds.

MDT is also looking at acquiring a RFID company in Shenzhen, China with 33 engineers. It will have a majority stake once the deal goes through, says Liew. “It is a synergistic deal and when it happens, we will shift our R&D and manufacturing base to Shenzhen, which is where almost 70% of China’s RFID plants are located,” he adds.

With the platform the Apicta win has accorded, Liew aims to ride on the momentum of his national win and go global. He won’t be able to say then that not many have heard of MDT.

The original article was published in The Edge Malaysia on the week of 21st September 2009.