Chaney Ho, president of Advantech, said on the signing ceremony that the smart manufacturing and smart city are the major fields of Advantech’s roadmap in the next five to ten years, and has started to ally with machine tools firms to develop smart manufacturing controllers, including Goodway and YANG IRON PRECISION, through the Advantech-LNC, a subsidiary of Advantech.

Chaney Ho said that Advantech will combine the controller products of Advantech-LNC to help machine tools and mechanical equipment partners for moving foreard to smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0.

Goodway was a traditional machine tools manufacturer, but by integrating sensors and internet, they turned their dull products into a sentient robots. Now they can even manage production data, and gradually step into the industry 4.0.

Hsu Fu-Zhu, General Manager of Goodway, said, Goodway has spend around NT$ one hundred million in developing smart machine tools in six years, and the sales of smart lathe products exceeded NT$ three hundred million in two years.

He stressed that Goodway has worked with Advantech-LNC for many years, and implemented some excellent results including high-end dual system milling machines and automatic loading robot controller. And by allying with Advantech, the two sides will jointly develop the next generation smart automated products.

Guo Lun-Yu, general manager of Advantech-LNC, said, the company proposed a concept -“Integrated Robot Cell” to work with mechanical equipment providers and reform the sales concept. In addition to sale mechanical equipment to end-customers from original manufacturer, the company will also sale customized robotic arms to end-customers which will be purchased from their partners and integrated with their software, sensors.

Moreover, Guo said that the company will provide complete robotic system equided with EtherCAT networking specification, various controllers and accessories, to assist machine tools and mechanical equipment partners to build smart factory platform, complete the infrastructure of industry 4.0.