The prominent PCB manufacturer Unitech Printed Circuit Board Corp. joined the PCB A-Team project led by Taiwan Printed Circuit Association last year to become a pioneer for introducing smart manufacturing into the PCB industry. After more than a year of team integration and communication, the foundation engineering is gradually ending, and the project is expected to take effect next year. While actively entering into smart manufacturing, Unitech is considering many market factors. The Deputy General Manager LI, LI-CHUN of Unitech said that with increasingly complicated electronic product designs in the future, PCB processes are facing severe challenges and has no choice but to implement smart manufacturing.
 

LI, LI-CHUN also noted that PCB is a highly complex field within the electronics industry in which the processes involve the different fields of mechanics, chemistry, electronics, etc. Combined with the growing complexity of electronic product designs, the complexity of PCB processes will increase significantly compared to the past few years.

 

If the PCB industry wants to get rid of large-scale manufacturing and low-margin market competition, it must move forward and make breakthroughs in the high value-added product market. However, the processing of high value-added products is relatively more complicated. If the industry does not venture into smart manufacturing and continues to rely solely on manual maintenance of production capacity, survival will become increasingly difficult.

 

Unitech believes that the PCB industry must introduce smart manufacturing development, but it must first face the increasing difficulty and complex process technology. Without intelligent technology, the industry will find it hard to control production capacity in response to market changes.

 

On the other hand, if the PCB industry wants to accelerate the promotion of smart manufacturing and create a splash effect to help the relevant industries take off, LI, LI-CHUN suggested that it must first address the issue of domestic PCB production equipment being less smart. Currently, the biggest problem is that the wisdom of local equipment manufacturers cannot keep up with the pace of the PCB industry.
 

The annual output value of Taiwan’s PCB industry is continuing to move towards the NTD trillion goal, and the industry stands in a crucial position in the global market. Upon implementing smart manufacturing, the benefits are inevitable, but the Japanese and German brands still dominate front-line production equipment. Unfortunately, the influence of Taiwan’s equipment manufacturers is far from sufficient to compete with foreign factories. Taiwanese equipment manufacturers have to step up their efforts to improve their product intelligence and work with PCB manufacturers to create a symbiotic environment that can achieve a win-win situation. (News source: DIGITIMES)