Finding the right part for a classic motorcycle used to mean flipping through hundreds of paper catalogue pages while a customer waited. For busy mechanics and counter staff, these manual searches ate up valuable time that could have been spent repairing vehicles and serving drivers.

To solve this, Teo Yu Xiang from NYP’s Diploma in Information Technology (now known as Diploma in Computing), built an optical character recognition and data analytics system that automatically digitises paper parts catalogues. The smart platform transforms static scanned pages into a fully searchable online database. Instead of guessing pages or digging through dusty binders, staff can now instantly locate exact spare parts simply by typing in a quick keyword.

By replacing tedious manual paperwork with instant digital retrieval, the system saves the business roughly 180 man-hours every single month. What started as a clever student innovation proved so valuable that it evolved into AM Digiparts Pte Ltd, a thriving startup co-founded by Yu Xiang and Auto Machinery Singapore.

This remarkable success story highlights the practical, industry-focused learning at Nanyang Polytechnic's School of Information Technology, where students transform fresh ideas into high-impact solutions for real businesses.

Teo Yu Xiang: Through NYP, I had the opportunity to learn the technical side of building products, but the Technopreneurship pathway added another layer to that experience. The mentors were willing to both support and challenge our ideas, and the school opened doors for us to meet people outside NYP and learn from their actual business problems. That shaped the way I approached AM Digiparts. I had been given the privilege to take ownership of the technical work, learn from feedback and keep working through the parts that did not go as planned. It showed me that a student idea can become something worth building seriously.