In a move to support the government policy of promoting smart manufacturing and shifting towards smart factories, and meet the goal of enabling smart manufacturing to rapidly spread to the LED industry in Taiwan, MIRDC has subcontracted “Optoelectronic and Semiconductor Industries Development Project” from the Industrial Development Bureau. Thus MIRDC collaborated with SEMI Taiwan (Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International Taiwan) to hold the “LED Equipment Communication Protocol Result Presentation” on October 20 at Nangang Exhibition Center. The presentation invited numerous LED-related makers, including representatives from TEEIA (Taiwan Electronic Equipment Industry Association), TOSIA (Taiwan Optoelectronics Semiconductor Industry Association) and TLFEA (Taiwan Lighting Fixture Export Association), as well as terminal factories of the LED industry such as EPISTAR Corporation, Unity Opto Technology Co., Ltd., and equipment manufacturers like Aurotek Corporation, Evest Corporation, Hortech Company, ProbeLeader, ELS System Technology Co., Ltd., Symtek Automation Asia Co., Ltd. and Galaxy Technology Development Company. At the presentation, all participants witnessed the release and publication of the standard of communication protocol for the LED equipment in Taiwan. The establishment of this standard is expected to enable Taiwanese manufacturers to increase the overall efficiency for production and operation and further plan the development blueprint for the next phase, which will increase the competitiveness of the LED industry and speed up the upgrading of the related equipment and industries.

Mr. Yung-Mao Cheng, the Deputy Director of the MIRDC, pointed out that the MIRDC has acted on the policy from the Executive Yuan to promote smart machine-related industries, and gathered opinion from experts of the industries and enterprises. In 2016, the MIRDC has invited LED-related equipment companies, terminal factories, system companies and SEMI to establish a workgroup for the LED equipment communication protocol, and then reached consensus on deciding the initial version for the domestic LED equipment communication protocol.

The presentation not only released an official notice to explain about the details of the decided standard of communication protocol, but also invited terminal factories to share their opinions about future trends in industry automatization, as well as encouraging the equipment industry to share their experience about linking between manufacturing equipment. Furthermore, cases about how system companies introduced standards of communication protocol were also shared at the presentation, in order to create more opportunities for future cooperation and further advance toward the goal of promoting domestic smart manufacturing.