Shen Ching-fang, chairman of global PCB leader Zhen Ding, has been putting all his effort into developing automation for the company, and Shen emphasizes, "My goal is to increase our annual revenue and reduce the number of factory assembly-operators year to year!" A few years earlier, Zhen Ding created an automation department and worked together with the manufacturers of professional equipment to customize automation machines, so that even though its revenue has increased by 600 percent in the past 10 years, its manpower has only doubled. In the previous year, Zhen Ding produced billions of PCBs, and each piece had its own dedicated bar code. This is so that if any problems arise, the attribute responsible can be tracked down and one can find out what went wrong.

 

       In fact, although the wage costs in China are increasing rapidly every year, the employee turnover rate is still high, which has brought many headaches to Taiwanese companies that have set up factories in China. Having his own expertise and philosophy about factory management, Shen Ching-fang put forth the notion years ago that it was necessary for Zhen Ding to realize four modernizations as "rationalization, efficiency, automation, and unmanned." Shen illustrates this with the case of the recent factory expansion at Huai'an Park in Jiangsu Province. There are now about 5,500 employees at the new factory campus working on the production lines, but the production output equals the turn-over capacity rendered by 15,000 workers in the past. As a result, it can be said that the increase in production capacity is generated by automation. Furthermore, revenue has increased by 43.25% from 2016 to 2018, while the manpower has, on the contrary, been reduced by 10%, showing that automation can have a significant effect.

 

        The reason why Zhen Ding attaches so much importance to automation is that certain parts of the PCB manufacturing processes are harmful to human health, forcing Zhen Ding to resort to the use of machines as much as possible to protect its employees. In addition, information products are getting lighter and thinner as PCBs are geared towards the development of high-end technologies such as fine cables. As such, it is only through fully-automated machines that the relevant highly difficult manufacturing and production processes can be achieved. 

 

        Since Zheng Ding is fully committed to automation and partnered with first-class equipment manufacturers to design the required machinery, they are now able to assemble and manufacturer their automation equipment on their own. A considerable amount of automation equipment within the periphery of their factories has, actually, been developed by Zheng Ding. Shen Ching-fang points out that the "Light-off Factory" stage can be achieved in some parts of the factories, indicating a 100% automated production. (News source: Liberty Times)