Two Chinese production sites of iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and smaller rival Wistron Corp (緯創) have been named “global lighthouse” factories by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Hon Hai, known outside of Taiwan as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), said that its factory in Chengdu had been chosen by the WEF among 15 factories worldwide on this year’s “global lighthouse” list.
The Chengdu plant is the second Hon Hai factory to be included on the list after its Shenzhen plant was chosen in 2019.
Photo: CNA
The WEF and consulting firm McKinsey & Co in 2018 began the list of “lighthouse” factories chosen for their digital transformation — plants that have adopted the latest technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Since then, only 69 factories have been included on the list.
Hon Hai said that the choice of the Chengdu plant reflected the company’s efforts to boost the factory’s efficiency by 200 percent by adopting mixed reality, AI and IoT technologies at a time when the company was experiencing a rapid growth in its business, but faced a lack of skilled workers.
Mixed reality is the merging of “real” and “virtual” worlds to produce new environments and visualizations.
Hon Hai has been transforming itself from a pure contract manufacturer into a company that is able to integrate its hardware and software capabilities.
The company has been engaging with emerging technologies, such as 5G applications, electric vehicles and digital healthcare, to boost its profit margin in a competitive global market.
Wistron said that its factory in Kunshan that produces AI plus IoT devices had been chosen.
The factory’s inclusion on the WEF list represents a milestone for the firm, Wistron said, as it has been using new technologies to upgrade its facilities and lay a foundation for corporate sustainability.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS