Lean manufacturing in a highly regulated environment

Shiran is an Australian manufacturer of hair and beauty products and the company behind the iStar brand.

With a lean team, General Manager Manqing Zhao oversees procurement, production planning and day-to-day operations.

As a GMP-certified facility, Shiran manages significant volumes of regulatory documentation, making streamlined and centralised systems essential to maintaining efficiency.

Managing procurement manually across multiple spreadsheets

Before adopting ChemCloud, all procurement relied heavily on emails and various Excel spreadsheets - one for deliveries, another for certifications, and more for various compliance requirements.

With the General Manager juggling multiple responsibilities, these manual processes consumed valuable time that could have been focused on strategic growth.

Key Pain Points:

• Supplier communication scattered across emails with no centralised visibility
• Regulatory documents (COAs, SDS, certifications) manually saved, printed, and filed, creating the risk of misplaced or outdated documents.
• Finding alternative suppliers was research-intensive and time-consuming to compare

“Before ChemCloud, everything lived in emails and spreadsheets. It worked, but it took a lot of time – especially keeping COAs and documents filed correctly, which added to the administrative workload.”

Manqing Zhao, General Manager

Centralising procurement data on ChemCloud

To address these challenges, Manqing made the decision to adopt ChemCloud as the central place to manage procurement.

 As part of the implementation, the team at Shiran uploaded their approved materials into ChemCloud and used ChemCloud’s AI Agents to manage documents, read and ingest quotes from suppliers and manage deliveries – bringing everything into one unified system.  This provided the business with a central place to manage all of their procurement.

“Chemcloud gives me one clean view of everything. I don’t have to dig through emails or folders anymore – everything I need is right there.”

Manqing Zhao, General Manager

Three features provided particular value to Shiran.

Feature 1: Intelligent Material Sourcing

Easy discovery of alternative materials and suppliers without extensive research, simply by requesting quotes through the platform and waiting for supplier responses.

“When I need a new material or a new supplier, I just tell ChemCloud what I’m looking for and wait for suppliers to reply. No hours of research. One time we even saved about 20% by finding a better supplier through the platform.”

Manqing Zhao, General Manager

Specific benefit: Significant cost savings through fast supplier discovery and comparison.

Feature 2: Proactive Compliance Tracking

Automatic SDS expiry monitoring and reminders replaced manual checking on every delivery, ensuring regulatory documents stay current without constant oversight.

Specific benefit: Automated what was previously a manual check on every single inward delivery, with proactive alerts when documents need renewal.

Feature 3: Visual Delivery Dashboard

Color-coded status tracking (red/amber/green) provides instant visibility into order status, late deliveries, and outstanding confirmations. The visual alerts create accountability and make it impossible to ignore items that need attention.

Specific benefit: Eliminated need for separate Excel tracking spreadsheet for deliveries, saving time on manual updates and providing instant status visibility.

AI-powered automation delivered tangible time and cost savings

40+ material approvals accessible in one centralized location

All approved materials and their associated documentation now tracked in a single system instead of scattered across email and spreadsheets.

100+ regulatory documents automatically tracked and searchable

Complete visibility into SDS, COAs, and certifications with automatic expiry tracking, eliminating the need for manual Excel registers.

Significant cost savings on raw material sourcing through supplier discovery

Found an alternative supplier with better pricing through the platform’s easy sourcing capability.