Advantages of Taiwan's Machine Tool Industry

​The development of machine tools to smart manufacturing combined with 5G transmission has become a trend.

Taiwan machine tool industry cluster

The machine tool needs to have the trinity of sensing, control, and drive at the same time to complete the processing flow of smart manufacturing. Because the machining process of machine tools often faces tool wear, lack of mechanical arm operation, abnormal machine parts and machining, and factory collision pollution, which can easily cause work pieces to be scrapped or shut down and cause huge losses. Therefore, machine tool manufacturers improve the machining process by transforming smart manufacturing. The machining process of the machine tool, the internal core parts of the machine, and the safety of the external environment are faced with many problems, which derive the potential needs of the sensing module, such as the mechanical arm is not easy to feed the machine tool in a one-to-many manner, the stack of work pieces is chaotic and difficult to identify, large and complex The work piece is prone to shooting dead corners, so it is necessary to add a 3D vision sensor module to integrate motion sensing through the 3D vision to achieve accurate picking and placement of the entire row target and complement the limited range of the 3D sensor.

Profit from Taiwan's machine tool industry

• Strong orders from major machine tool manufacturers in May
• Although the distribution channel has not yet started the second half of the year in response to the epidemic, the inventory is already very low
• 5G related and epidemic prevention needs are outstanding
• China order-level returned to the eve of the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia, and the number of components exported from Taiwan to the mainland exceeded NT$500 million for two months.

With the resumption of work on the China’s lead and the concentrated pull of machine tools, the demand for 5G is strongest. Although the kinetic energy of mobile phones has slowed down in the short term, as Apple will mass-produce 5G models, there is a chance to further stimulate demand and reach a peak.

Taiwan's machine tool industry cluster and operating status

Machine tools are also called machine tools. Machines that are powered by power and cannot be carried by humans can be defined as machine tools that use a combination of physical, chemical, or other methods such as cutting and impact to achieve the purpose of processing materials. It refers to the power machinery manufacturing device, which is usually used for precision cutting of metal to produce other machines or processed metal parts. Machine tools can be divided into two categories: metal cutting and metal forming.

Corresponding to Taiwan's industry classification, it belongs to the manufacturing-machinery and equipment manufacturing-metal processing machinery and equipment manufacturing industry. The breakdown of the metal cutting machine tool manufacturing industry and other metal processing machinery and equipment manufacturing industries are all machine tool industries. category. The complete machine tool includes drilling machines, machine tools, integrated processing machines, milling machines, sawing machines and other metal cutting tools, grinding machines, punching machines and other metal forming tools, and electric discharge machines.

Machines that are driven by power and cannot be carried by manpower can be defined as machine tools that use a combination of physical, chemical, or other methods such as cutting and impact to achieve the purpose of processing materials.
It requires a large number of components. The upstream industry can roughly be divided into steel cast iron components including castings and sheet parts; transmission components including ball screws, linear slides, and gears; including screws, nuts, and other hardware parts; spindles, bearings, etc. Precision bearings; hydraulic and air pressure parts; electronic control components such as CNC, CNC controller, servo, driver, etc. In the downstream part, machine tools can be applied to various aspects such as the mold industry, electronics industry, national defense industry, automobile and motorcycle industry, machinery industry, home appliance hardware industry, biomedical industry, and green energy industry.

According to the 2018 Factory Calibration and Operation Survey of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan has 945 metal cutting machine tool manufacturing factories and 1,013 other metal processing machinery and equipment manufacturing factories, totaling 1,958 factories; the total number of employees is 43,907; The annual operating income reached NT 191,540,871,000.

The distribution of machine tool manufacturers accounted for 58.5% of taiwan central counties and cities area(Taichung, Changhua and Nantou), which shows that Taiwan's machine tool manufacturers are mainly concentrated in the central counties and cities area(Taichung, Changhua and Nantou). The number of employed employees is also highest in the central counties and cities area(Taichung, Changhua and Nantou), accounting for 62.4% of the country. In terms of operating income, the central counties and cities area(Taichung, Changhua and Nantou) accounted for 65.8% of the country, forming the "Golden Rift Valley" for machine tools in the central region.

Looking at the proportion of the number of factories from the scale of factory employees, taking the metal cutting machine tool industry as an example, the results of the factory calibration and operation survey in 2018 show that there are 945 factories nationwide, of which nearly 70%, 652 factories are employees. Small business types with less than 20 employees.

From the perspective of the proportion of total revenue, the machine tool industry with more than 50 employees (including 50~99, 100~199, 200~299, 300 or more) accounts for nearly 70% of the overall machine tool operating income The ratio of 5. Comparing the number of companies by size, it can be seen that in the machine tool industry, small-scale companies with a large number of companies account for a low percentage of total revenue, and large companies with a small number of companies account for a relatively high total revenue.

Further discussing the annual revenue growth of factories of various scales of employment, from the 10-year compound annual revenue growth rate (CAGR) from 2009 to 2018, it can be roughly seen that there is a positive correlation between the number of employees and the revenue growth rate. It can be seen that the ability of large companies to expand revenue has more advantages than small and medium-sized companies. Also, how small and medium-sized businesses can increase their revenue growth rate through product value-added and service upgrades has become an issue that cannot be ignored in the machine tool industry.

​Reference: digitimes、udn