The global fourth industrial revolution in smart manufacturing and automation requires intelligent solutions. On Wednesday (Aug. 18), German engineering giant Siemens started a month-long Digital Enterprise Virtual Expo. The expo specially showcases a collaboration project between Siemens and King Steel, Taiwan’s leading producer of shoe-making machinery. The expo demonstration how the project used full-spectrum digital solutions to assist companies in implementing a successful digital transformation of their manufacturing processes.
King Steel manufacturing machinery use Siemens SIMATIC controllers integrated with Siemens Digital Twin digitization solutions to accelerate the development of new machines and more efficient management of component wastage. Siemens and King Steel, two powerhouses within their respective industries, are joining hands and making great strides toward decoding the fourth industrial revolution.
Siemens continues to promote digital industries in Taiwan, this year signing a memorandum of agreement to collaborate with King Steel in the development of key fourth industrial revolution applications for the manufacturing industry.
Photo courtesy of Siemens/King Steel
Siemens Taiwan’s general manager of digital industry, Tino Hildebrand, said: “Taiwan is a world-class center for shoe manufacturing and Siemens is fortunate to have the opportunity to work closely with top manufacturer King Steel to introduce Siemens’ full-spectrum digitalization solutions. Siemens is assisting King Steel to upgrade its shoe machinery design and manufacturing to help drive forward industrial productivity, improve flexibility, realize digital transformation within a fast-changing global market.”?
According to Jim Chen (陳璟浩), special assistant to King Steel chairman, “As we enter a post-COVID-19 era, many of our customers are facing staff shortage problems, particularly involving the production process of rubber soles, which is quite complex.
In the past, one piece of equipment would require between four and six people to operate it, consuming both time and labor cost.
Photo courtesy of Siemens/King Steel
By teaming up with Siemens and employing its highly-efficient SIMATIC S7 series of controllers and integrating this with Siemens digital software, we have been able to significantly increase the production efficiency of our equipment, reducing labor intensity by as much as 80 to 90 percent.
Additionally, during the early stages of the equipment’s development, Siemens’ Digital Twin solution — abbreviated to NX MCD — allows for pre-production virtual reality simulated testing. This greatly shortens the product development timeline and allows King Steel to produce bespoke digital transformation platforms for its customers.
The successful collaboration between King Steel is an important milestone, providing a basis for future cooperation between the two companies, facilitating rapid research and development and producing a competitive edge for King Steel.
Photo courtesy of Siemens/King Steel
For more than 40 years, King Steel has placed an important emphasis on research and development as well as innovation. Responding to industry requirements for digital transformation and smart manufacturing, King Steel has partnered with Siemens to develop a new generation of smart machinery with leading industries in mechatronics, open communication and integrated virtual reality.
Siemens provides a comprehensive integrated automation platform, called the TIA Portal, which pairs the high-performance SIMATIC S7-1500 controller with Digital Twin integrated virtual reality solutions, which also incorporates motor components on the same platform. The fully-integrated mechatronic platform achieves the aim of improving the efficiency of high-end manufacturing machinery research and development.
Siemens emphasizes that its SIMATIC S7-1500 high-performance controller has excellent system functions, an extremely short response time, and the best and safest technical integration.
Paired with the Digital Twin solution and NX MCD mechatronics conceptual design, which incorporates CAD 3D modeling, digital modeling of equipment and machinery can be generated. This allows for simulation testing and adjustments to be carried out during the early stage of the development and procurement, greatly reducing the development time of new machinery and equipment, and saving on development costs.
King Steel is leading position as a world-class producer of shoe-making machinery and equipment has working with Siemens to develop and integrate the latest technologies. Through seamless connection of digital software and hardware, and the use of big data, King Steel has been able to streamline the development process and shorten time-to-market.
As the industry marches on towards the goal of factory automation, King Steel is well-placed to meet the goals of automated smart production and remote, real-time management that its customers demand; helping its clients build smart factories for the future and enhance their international competitiveness.
For more information on the Digital Enterprise Virtual Expo, which runs through to Sep. 17, please visit: https://www.siemensdi.com.tw
The Investment Commission yesterday approved a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) application to invest an additional US$3.5 billion in its Arizona subsidiary to manufactured advanced chips. The world’s largest contract chipmaker’s board of directors last month approved the funding project after TSMC started moving manufacturing equipment into the fab in December last year in preparation for the production of 4-nanometer chips next year. TSMC said it has also commenced the second phase of facility construction in Arizona. The second fab is to produce semiconductors using 3-nanometer technology in 2026. Altogether, TSMC plans to spend US$40 billion on the Arizona fabs, doubling its
KEY SECTOR: Taiwan’s new chip legislation is insufficient, and a more strategic ‘chip act’ that covers the whole semiconductor ecosystem is needed, MediaTek’s chairman said MediaTek Inc (聯發科) chairman Rick Tsai (蔡明介) yesterday urged the government to formulate a state semiconductor strategy and comprehensive “chip act” that includes local chip designers and smaller-scale semiconductor companies, as they are facing intensifying competition from China. The government is playing an increasingly important role in safeguarding the local semiconductor industry’s competitiveness, given that the US, the EU and Japan are offering hefty subsidies and significant tax incentives to build semiconductor capacity domestically, as they have realized the strategic importance of semiconductors, Tsai said. To implement such a program, the government should take steps to finance a “chip act,” Tsai said
Microsoft Corp has threatened to cut off access to its Internet search data, which it licenses to rival search engines, if they do not stop using it as the basis for their own artificial intelligence (AI) chat products, people familiar with the dispute have said. The software maker licenses the data in its Bing search index — a map of the Internet that can be quickly scanned in real time — to other companies that offer Web search, such as Apollo Global Management Inc’s Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. Last month, Microsoft integrated a cousin of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chat technology, into Bing. Rivals
Three years after Luxembourg declared all public transport free in a bid to clear its roads of jams and cut pollution, the car is still king of the congested grand duchy. Traffic permitting, it is barely an hour’s drive from Weiswampach in the far north of Luxembourg near the German and Belgian borders to Dudelange in the south, next door to France. The wealthy country of just 650,000 people appeared the perfect place for a bold experiment — making public transport on trains, trams and buses free nationwide. However, Luxembourg, despite its lack of long-distance highways, has one of the highest rates
RSS