Vietnam makers eye on factory automation

Vietnam Association of Supporting Industries (VASI) has successfully departed Taiwan upon their trip to visit metalworking sector in Taiwan from Nov 5^th – 7^th . The event was organized by Taiwan Corporate Synergy Development Center, Ringier Trade Media and Topology Research Institute with the purpose to explore greater potential between the Taiwan’s machinery sector and Vietnamese tier 1 and tier 2 automotive industry suppliers.

Mr. DUONG DANH TAI, the Chief of VASI office led member enterprises from–Deputy Director Le Van Du from Jat Autoparts, Director Le Thanh Hung from Le Hung Technology, Vice Director Nguyen Ba Tong from Bach Tung Mechanics, Sales Manager Brian from IDMEA to join the tour. On the 6^th of November the group visited Chin Fong Machine, the most senior press manufacturer in Taiwan.

Chin Fong factory visit

Chin Fong machine has entered the Southeast Asian market for several years, their main customer fields span across the automotive industry, metal hardware, and home appliance – with automotive as the biggest proportion. Over 70% of the composition of their presses is made in-house. Equipped with several Toshiba die casting machines, and 125 tons overhead cranes in the factory, Chin Fong presents its muscle in facilities and quality production capacity. During the factory tour the visitors were being introduced to their latest product series – 4.0 automatic all-in-one compact presses used for small metal hard wares production. With five production sites already situated across the Straits, Chin Fong’s newly established Ning Bo factory will start its operation in months -with a more colossal scale to respond to the demands from China, India, and the APAC regions. In the coming years, Chin Fong aims to construct fully automation production lines, which is constructed with robots, automation feeders, and more precise human friendly interactive systems.

Mr. DUONG DANH TAI, the Chief of VASI office stressed that he will bring back the messages from the factories and share the information with its 200+ members. He also explained that although Vietnam at present is dominated towards motorcycles manufacturing, the country is ambitious in producing automobiles – implicated from the Paris Motor Show in October where Vietnam's first volume car manufacturer, VinFast, has debuted two vehicles, a sedan and a new crossover.

he second factory visit was in the afternoon, at Mobiletron Electronics. The CEO Mr. Tsai welcomed the group personally, after being back from the U.S. in the morning. VASI visitors were first taken to a tour with Mobiletron’s electric bus, which is the lightest electric bus in the world with a max speed of 110km/hr. The notable technology worth paying attention to is the battery system. Outlining a clear energy strategy has become an issue of security for major economies, Taiwan is no exception. The goal to replace all city buses by electric powered is set to the timeframe of year 2030, while in the year 2035 all scooters shall be electrical ones. Mobiletron explained that in reflection to the global energy mainstream aiming for electrical power, it also implicated a serious issue, which is the recycling of used batteries. Huge amount of waste batteries would occur once their power capacity has gone down to 60-80%. Mobiletron is working on applying the used batteries to energy storage facilities after post-usage on electric cars. Energy storage systems are the heart for green energy to succeed. Whether it is solar power or wind power, a reliable energy storage system acts as the key to down-play the sudden impacts from weather change. ‘A strong energy storage system is an urgent technology that the entire world is in demand as countries stress on increased reliance on sustainable energy, and the company has found post-use solution for electric car batteries ’, says Mobiletron.

Mobiletron CEO Mr. Tsai meets the group

CEO Mr. Tsai also demonstrated all sorts of industrial IoT Mobiletron has created, one of the star technology is IoV（internet of vehicles. They integrated IoV to electric cars, creating a completely intelligent vehicle that can access services for business, entertainment, communication with safe and secure cloud connectivity. The movement and real time vision of the vehicle from each angle can be inspected instantly. Finally, Mr. Tsai toured the group around their office, where the company’s culture of independent and concentration to details are reflected - from the well-organized sky gardens that are autonomously maintained by different departments, and coffees that are paid voluntarily. Having registered 500 patents so far, Mobiletron can act as a crucial company that engage in Vietnam’s electric transport’s revolution.

On the 7^th, VASI visiting group attended Taiwan International Machine Tool Show (TMTS 2018), they showed up at the booths of HIWIN, EQUIPTOP, Accutex, Greenway, Litz, Supertec, Tongtai, SOCO, and a number of leading manufacturers. They paid extensive attention to the highly automated features in machining centers, the high speed special purpose lathes, robotics, and software systems. The Director Mr. Huang of Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders' Association, the organizer of TMTS also expressed his sincere welcome to VASI and its members.

TMBA Director Mr. Huang meeting with the group

Having had a fruitful tour, the members of VASI have packed abundant information back. Most of the visitors had experience in using Taiwanese machineries, and agreed that the high quality as well as being economical are the most attractive drives for users. It reflected the close cooperation between the two regions, hopefully this tour between the high level executives would be the starting point to deliver more connections to the Southeast Asia supply chain.