Productivity 4.0 Connecting Global Intelligence Opportunities ─ A Connected Future
Author / Cai Xiangzheng [Issue Date: 2015/10/2]
As global manufacturing OEMs are faced with the trend of ever meager profits, at home the Taiwanese manufacturing industry is no longer guaranteed its position in the marketplace. Industrial gross profit, multivariate customization mass production service, intelligent manufacturing, and other issues are affecting global ICT industrial environment and the threat is irreversible. Moreover, countries are launching manufacturing upgrade plans, including the United States which launched the “AMP Plan” and “CPS Plan” in 2011, Germany pushed through the “Industry 4.0 Plan” in 2012, Japan proposed the “Japan Industry Revitalization Plan” in 2013, and during 2015 China has been pushing their own “Made in China 2025 Plan.” These plans support the development of high-end manufacturing equipment and without exception they're demonstrating how the development of global manufacturing is moving towards intelligent information technology. In the past, Taiwan's manufacturing industry achieved good scales of economy as it entered the fiercely competitive Red Sea market.
Vice President of the Executive Yuan, Chang San-cheng, personally presided over the two-day “Productivity 4.0 Technology Development Strategy Conference” held June 4th and 5th in 2015. Having been through trans-department planning and discussion, the ”Executive Yuan Office Productivity 4.0 Development Plan (draft)” sets out core objectives to accelerate the industrial chain vertically and horizontally with intelligent digital stratigies. More specifically, strategic development, industrial optimization, intelligent supply chains and ecosystems, intelligent machinery, and IOT and Big Data were selected as targets for the implementation tools of intelligent manufacturing, intelligent business, and intelligent agriculture with the Plan including these pilot sectors: three farm fisheries (biotechnology agriculture industry, exquisite agricultural industry and precision agriculture industry), five manufacturing industries (electronic information, metal transport, machinery, food industry, textile industry), and two commercial sectors (retail trade and logistics).
According to the “Executive Yuan Office Productivity 4.0 Development Plan (draft),” to realize a manufacturing output increase of four percent with 50,000 additional manufacturers entering the industry at the 4.0 stage (Smart Factory) within nine years (2015-2024), the government roughly estimates it will invest at least NT$4 billion annually to develop Productivity 4.0. Government investments alone could reach NT$36 billion within nine years.
Facing a future trending toward a connected world, industry sees the IOT (Internet of Things), IOE (Internet of Everything) and Big Data analysis, all as industrial optimization, life optimization and work pattern optimization tools. Meanwhile, the information services industries is responsible for the industries that are touching our lives. Taiwan's information services have the resources to implement smart cities, intelligent government systems, intelligent manufacturing, intelligent healthcare, intelligent logistics, smart retail, smart financial services and even more structural upgrades in other industries. Take for example a global leadingthe Taiwan Highway Electronic Toll System, which exhibits its soft power in the global information service industry. As a comprehensive household and conscription system, it offers individual income tax declaration every year in May, over 90 percent of householdusers in Taiwan are using its electronic reporting. At the same time the information service “wisdom” connects business opportunities will be self-evident.
In the future, Connected is one way to achieve Productivity 4.0, ” How to apply implementation to assist industry or to improve peoples living standards” is a business opportunity for information services. Quote a vintners advertising slogan, ”Keep Going” . Information services except to keep going but also to keep ahead, and go before the industry and intelligent government with a good application service scenario to led Taiwan's industrial structure optimization and upgrade.