Industry 4.0 – the TMTS 2016 focus

Last year’s edition of the largest international exhibition for metalworking machinery - Taiwan International Machine Tool Show (TMTS) - took place between November 23 and 27 2016 in the Greater Taichung International Expo Center of Taichug, Taiwan.

Organized by the Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders’ Association - TMBA, a total of 738 exhibitors from Taiwan and abroad participated in the event - 658 local countries and 80 countries from overseas. Among the foreign exhibitors were companies representing as many as 14 different countries, including Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, France, USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Australia, Singapore, Netherlands, and others.

As a traditional partner of TMTS, Southeast European INDUSTRIAL market Publisher - TLL Media Publishing House was again on site and once again our journalist was the only attendee from South-East Europe.

The gross total exhibit area covered was 78,000 square meters, on which a total of 4002 company booths were placed. This is an increase of 8% to overall scale and exhibitor numbers in comparison to the previous show in 2014.

Taiwan International Machine Tool Show traditionally brings together the leading, most interesting players on the machine tools market within Taiwan. This particular sector is highly developed in the country - in the first half of 2016, the export market for machine tools amounted to 1,6 billion US dollars.

The most popular export products are machining centers and lathes, which have a monthly average export value of 0,6 billion US dollars and 0,3 billion US dollars respectively. Within the metal forming sector, shearing & stamping forming machines export 0,22 billion US dollars. For the same period, an average of 1096 machining centers and 1698 lathes were being exported by Taiwan per month. The biggest amount of lathes were delivered in China - 22,3% of the export market.

At the same time, one of the top ten export destinations for lathes from Taiwan turns out to be Bulgaria. According to a survey conducted by the Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders’ Association, for the period January - July 2016, Bulgaria was the eight most popular exporting region.

Intelligent production as an emphasis
The overall theme around which the latest edition of TMTS was centered and was closely associated with Industry 4.0 - "Activating Intelligent Manufacturing - Heading towards Industry 4.0". The exhibiting companies demonstrated a number of innovations in Automation & Robotics, Metal Cutting Machines, Metal Forming Machines, Tube and Wire Processing Machines, Components, Parts, Tools, Cutters, Measuring Instruments, Molds, Software & Accessories.

"Facing competition from the global market, the Taiwan machine tool industry is confronted with the impact and challenge of external environment, and the future will be a "teamwork-oriented" era. In the future, manufacturers of machine tools and accessories will be having more multi-dimensional collaboration. Moreover, the industry, academia, and research bodies must cooperate more closely for integration, in order to upgrade the resource and quality of new product research and development," announced Jui-Hsiung Yen, chairman of the Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders’ Association, in an official salutation.

As every country is directing its development towards intelligent manufacturing and Industry 4.0, Taiwan enterprises are actively trying to penetrate foreign markets by investing domestic and foreign resources into developing intelligent machines within a very short framework.

Manufacturing in Taiwan and in the Taichung region
The latest edition of TMTS again demonstrates that the government of Taiwan is determined to turn Taichung into a center of intelligent machinery by offering support in various areas, such as international cooperation, marketing, research and development, land acquisition, and talent recruitment. The promotion of this industry is one of the five major industrial development objectives that the Taiwan government has set for itself. The other targeted industries are national defense, biotech, pharmaceuticals, and green technologies.

"The Taiwanese Government has assigned Taichung as the capital of intelligent machinery, and set intelligent machinery as one of the top five star industries which are going to be promoted," commented Jui-Hsiung Yen.

"For the duration of my appointment as a Chairman, I will be committed to leading association members to cooperate with the government, academia and research bodies, to develop specific solutions for accelerating the application of intelligent manufacturing. At the same time, the Association will actively cooperate with the Taichung city government to place specific directions for the development of intelligent machinery."

Among the leading companies presented at the exhibition were Tongtai, Chevalier, Sigma, Goodway, Habor, Campro, Detron, Victor, YCM, Jainher, and others. Different moments and highlights of their event participation are presented by photos.

HIWIN
HIWIN Technologies Corp. is a traditional participant in the exhibition, so its presentation was impressive as expected. The company stand in white and green was one of the most interesting not only because of the different robotic attractions, but also because of the extremely innovative products and technologies in the field of motion control technologies which the company introduced during the event. The central topic was, of course, Industry 4.0.

"We believe that the Industry 4.0 solutions we offer can help our clients increase their product value and quickly respond to emerging trends and production requirements. We have long-term experience in producing key components for automation systems," said the president of HIWIN Enid Tsai.

In addition to the new and interesting developments in the field of linear drives, the company’s participation in TMTS included a presentation of some innovative projects of its Luren Precision Co. subdivision. The showcased products included HIWIN’s single axis robots which utilize a combination of a motor driven ballscrew or belt and a linear guideway system, as well as the HIWIN ballscrews consisting of a screw spindle and a nut integrated with rolling elements that cycle through a return mechanism.

Tongtai
The Tongtai Group (uniting the companies Tongtai, Honor Seiki, APEC and Quick-tech) focused on intelligent manufacturing during its participation at TMTS 2016. The company demonstrated various production capabilities, including 8 new lathe models for the aviation industry, which offer an elaborate intelligent manufacturing solution. These new additions to the company’s production line were of great interest to the visitors at the Tongtai stand.

Among the demonstrated products were the two softwares TIMS - Tongtai intelligent manufacturing system and TLM - Tongtai Line Management, which combine iMachining intelligent machining functions, as well as the vertical machining centers VTX-5, VP-8 and VC-610, the dual-spindle horizontal CNC lathe MT-2000, the multi-tasking turning center iTD-2000YBC, and the horizontal machining center SH-5000P.