JK Concepts: Energy Monitoring for Retail Display Manufacturing

JK Concepts now sees its factory's energy use as it happens, machine by machine and shift by shift. CobiNeural replaced a single monthly bill with real-time, equipment-level monitoring across the workshop.

The site

JK Concepts makes the display furniture and shelving that major brands use to present their products in stores. The work is precise and made to order. Cutting, edging, finishing and assembly runs change with every client's specification. This makes energy hard to predict: two jobs that look similar on paper can use very different amounts of power, depending on the materials, the length of the run and which machines are running at the same time.

Like most Malaysian manufacturers, JK Concepts pays a Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) bill based on both consumption, in kilowatt-hours (kWh), and maximum demand. Both are easy to treat as a fixed cost of doing business, and hard to act on when the only information arrives once a month, after the fact.

The problem

Production energy arrived as one lump sum. There was no view of which equipment drove consumption, no way to separate a heavy finishing shift from a light one, and no simple way to link energy to output. When the bill changed, nobody could say why.

In a job shop, that blind spot costs money. Compressors and dust extraction are left running between batches. Machines warm up long before the line is ready. Demand peaks add avoidable maximum demand charges to the bill. None of this is visible until the invoice arrives. Waste cannot be reduced without seeing it at equipment level, and one number a month is not enough to support work under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act (EECA) or the ISO 50001 energy management standard.

What we did

CobiNeural monitors energy in real time at equipment level across the workshop, turning a single bill into a continuous picture of how the plant uses power. It runs on its own or as an overlay on existing metering and controls, so the shop floor kept running while the data started coming in.

Three modules match JK Concepts' needs:

• Insights to Energy is the core. It tracks consumption, power factor, energy use intensity (EUI) and the Max Demand KPI (key performance indicator) by location and by equipment. The team can see which machines and shifts drive consumption and when demand peaks form during the day.
• Insights to Equipment extends sub-metering to individual machines and motors. A job shop needs this level of detail to link a specific process to its energy use, rather than averaging everything into one workshop total.
• Alerts sends WhatsApp or email notifications for anomalies and unexpected power draw. A compressor left running overnight is noticed the next morning, not the next month.

Where the data shows clear, repeatable savings, scheduling and control of standby loads can be added as an automation project, so switching things off no longer depends on someone remembering. Monitoring comes first, because automation is only as good as the measurement behind it.

What changed

JK Concepts can see its energy use as it happens, by equipment and by shift, instead of reading a bill after the fact. This is the starting point for the next steps:

• cutting standby waste
• reducing demand peaks
• linking consumption to output
• managing cost as production grows

It also gives the team the audit-ready data that EECA reporting and ISO 50001 workflows depend on. For a made-to-order manufacturer, the move from guessing to measuring is the main result. The bill is no longer a surprise; it is something the operations team can manage.

See how other Malaysian manufacturers approach this on our case studies page. If your energy data is still a once-a-month lump sum, talk to us about your facility and we will show you what equipment-level monitoring looks like for your operation.