Taiwan's fastener industry has always played an important role worldwide and has always been known as the kingdom of fasteners. In 2018, its export value reached NT$145.3 billion, making a historical high record. However, the fastener industry is affected by the US-China trade war. How to proactively introduce smart manufacturing in creating high value to face global competition and get more orders is an important issue for industrial development.
MIRDC has a smart manufacturing model for the rapid replication and diffusion of fabricated metal products to connect with domestic equipment manufacturers, software and hardware service companies, system integrators, and IT system manufacturers. Currently, the smart manufacturing model is focused on the fastener industry. MIRDC built a fastener industry smart manufacturing demonstration production line to integrate its forming design simulation and process system, optical mold adjustment expert system, fastener forming process monitoring system, forming quality analysis and pre-diagnosis system, and automatic sampling system, establishing a systematic production approach for the fastener industry by providing customized smart manufacturing solutions.
Dr. Chong-tian Lin, Director of MIRDC, pointed out that by building a smart SaaS cloud application system for the metal fabricated products industry, introducing the NIP, and connecting with the equipment of the service providers, and through the production line built by MIRDC for field trials, the production lines integrated with cloud computing required for the intellectualization of the fastener industry can be completed. Collaboration with TIFI aims to jointly promote the smart fastener cloud service and to break through point-to-point service. As long as the equipment can be connected to the network, mold design, forging force analysis, process optimization, quality online measurements, and equipment pre-diagnosis can be provided remotely, establishing long-distance care to help the digital transformation and upgrading of manufacturers.
Dr. Chiu-Feng Lin, president of MIRDC, said that in order to respond to industry demand, the fastener industry smart manufacturing demonstration production line has been built, and the introduction of a fastener smart cloud service will follow to link the information of the upstream, mid-stream, downstream supply chain to develop an innovative and new cooperation model for the fastener industry, giving manufacturers the ability to become tier one manufacturers ready for global orders. Recently, Taiwan fasteners smart cloud service promotion steering committee was held and experts from the industry, academic, and research sectors were invited to give suggestions. Experts who attended include Mr. Hsu-Sheng Chang, Executive Secretary of TIFI, Mr. Yu-Song Chen, consultant of a major fastener plant Chun Yu, equipment developers Jern Yao and Chien Tsai, ERP service provider esta, and Advantech. In the future, MIRDC in connection with the major alliance collaboration team will jointly invest in fastener manufacturing to create a new and favorable situation for the industry.