Asa Meng

Sefar Oceania

Industrial Designer & Estimator, 2023 – Present

Sefar designs and manufactures filtration, mesh and yarn-based products. Building on 200 years of expertise, it controls the full value chain, from drawing monofilament yarn to weaving mesh and fabricating filter components. It operates locally on six continents, including Australia and New Zealand, and is headquartered in Switzerland.

Sefar monofilament meshSefar multifilament meshSefar DLW meshElectron microscope view of woven filtration mesh, side onElectron microscope view of woven filtration mesh, top downElectron microscope view of twill woven filtration mesh

Markets

Australia

  • Chemicals
  • Energy
  • Environmental
  • Food
  • Life Science
  • Medical
  • Mining
  • Milling

Key achievements

  1. 01

    Sole designer, concept to production

    I design every Sefar Oceania product end to end, from measuring the customer’s sample and specifying the material to production drawings and a complete design package. Averaging 5–10 jobs a day, I support nine sales engineers across Australia and New Zealand with design and quoting.

  2. 02

    Over 300 new product designs

    Each one designed and specified to the customer’s own tolerances. When local manufacturing closed in 2026, I moved the top 38 high-value products offshore in a single week, and over 250 to date, to Sefar Malaysia, Sefar India and external suppliers.

  3. 03

    Global ERP ownership

    I create and maintain every product code in Infor LN across its lifecycle: BOMs, routings, tolerances, technical data and revisions. Every change is recorded through engineering change control and signed off, so every Sefar site builds from the same data.

  4. 04

    Offshore design leadership

    I direct the design teams in Malaysia and India through their design manager, allocating work, checking outputs and confirming schedules. They turn my design packages into local production drawings, and I answer every design and material question so jobs land on time.

  5. 05

    Suppliers and lead times

    I decide where each product is made and negotiate price, lead time and MOQ with suppliers in China and Europe, in Mandarin where needed. Safety stock I set for forecast items cut lead times from four weeks to days.

  6. 06

    Chemical engineering

    I match the polymer, construction and micron rating to each application’s chemistry, temperature and pressure, choosing polyester over nylon or needle felt over mesh. Tensile, air-permeability, microscopic and XRF testing prove the choice before it’s made.

The cuff that wouldn’t snap

Problem solving

A national fleet operator asked Sefar to improve on an OEM dust filter bag for their trucks. I reverse engineered the twin-pocket snapcuff bag from a supplied sample, and it met every requirement except one: the cuff wouldn’t snap in and seal.

Later test fits revealed why. The cell plate was a rounded rectangle rather than the usual circle, and a cage inserted into it formed the seal. With the client on the other side of the country and no way to send the plates in, I sent four cuff-only samples in 2 mm steps, laser engraved A to D with their exact dimensions, along with laser-cut cell-plate templates, so the team could test fit on site.

They chose D, I updated the production drawings, and the bag is now a repeat annual order with a follow-on trial in a new material.

From site visit to finished product

Site visits, prototyping and testing.

Confidentiality: Sefar Oceania product designs, specifications, drawings and customer details are proprietary and covered by non-disclosure agreements. Content on this page is limited to what is publicly shareable, and customer names and sensitive details are omitted or generalised. Views expressed are my own.

Sefar Group on LinkedIn

A post from Sefar Group about my role.

Let’s talk.

hello@asa-meng.com
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