The development of smart manufacturing must be accompanied by the synchronized growth of smart machinery. As the first line of production, the equipment side must master most of the key production technologies. Therefore, in promoting smart manufacturing, we must not ignore the role of smart machinery. While Taiwan has strong manufacturing competency in many fields, the self-sufficiency rate of some equipment is not high, resulting in one of the difficulties of developing smart machinery.

In 2011, Germany proposed “Industry 4.0” to launch a manufacturing revolution around the world. Although Taiwan rushed to catch up with this wave of enthusiasm in the beginning, industry observations have found through continuous investigation of the current industry situation in recent years that the initial shouted slogan of Industry 4.0 has gradually quieted, and the scope has been narrowed. The government hopes that companies will implement this concept from a pragmatic approach. “Smart machinery,” which goes along with the 5+2 Innovative Industries Plan advocated by the government, has been deemed an urgently established priority project.

In addition to cultivating the smart development of industrial machinery, one of the goals of the government’s promotion of smart machinery is to increase the localization of equipment. Although Taiwan has leading manufacturing capabilities in many industrial fields, some production equipment is not controlled by local operators. As a result, grasping the core technology of smart manufacturing based on the overall promotion aspect can be difficult.

Taking the PCB industry as an example, the survey data of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) indicated that the PCB output value in Taiwan exceeded NT$600 billion in 2017, with a market share of 31.3%, making it the world’s largest source of PCB supply. However, PCB industry operators noted that although Taiwan’s domestic demand market is active, front-line production equipment is still dominated by Japanese or German machinery. The influential power of Taiwan’s equipment factories struggles to compete with that of foreign factories.

This lack of equipment self-sufficiency has also hindered the development of smart machinery. In recent years, PCB industry operators have also said that mainland China’s equipment factories have come on strong. The opposite party has a strong cohesiveness and has been actively unifying standards. Once the integration is completed, mainland China’s equipment manufacturers will inversely spearhead the industry. After the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOE) and the Taiwan Printed Circuit Association (TPCA) promoted the PCB A-Team by targeting rigid PCB operators for counseling in 2017, they further established the PCBECI Equipment Networking Pilot Team last year and initially coached at least 20 operators to achieve equipment networking capabilities. One of the purposes of the industrial alliance of Taiwan’s PCB industry is the hope of fostering local equipment manufacturers through global influence, thus helping each other to gain mutual benefit and ultimately become leaders in the market. (News source: Digitimes)