Since the debut of the Sino-American Trade War occurs currently,” President Hsiao of Forwell shares his opinions, “the escalating economy situation is hindered and the world economy faces a great challenge.” Hsiao points out the difficult situation that smart facility suppliers encounter now. Both mainland China and the USA are important and primary export markets for Taiwanese suppliers, once these two markets fight for a trade war, Taiwanese suppliers might suffer from the corresponding consequences. One of the consequences might be the slow development of smart machinery technology which would impact manufacturers in this sector to encounter serious challenges.

President Hsiao says that, the reason why the market of smart machinery is not blooming in Taiwan is because of certain specific reasons, such as the recession of domestic market, political situation, and the trade war between China and the US. These factors lead to great uncertainty to the smart machinery industry as buyers are no longer willing to invest on facilities due to the great uncertainty they experienced in the market.

However, the establishment of smart manufacturing is a long-term project that request for sustainable operation strategy, including the estimation of a reasonable manufacture model and standardized procedures. Hsiao states that, once if the market is deemed to be not stable and is not controllable, all the upgrade plans are useless topics. Meanwhile, the trend of smart manufacturing is in front of everybody and inevitable in the world. The essence of smart manufacturing is made from highly developed automation technology, which is based on a well-developed economy. Besides, not all industries are suitable to the introduction of this technology. For now, only those who belong to high-end, mass-productive, technology-intensive, and labor-intensive industries need to introduce the smart technology for their production lines.

Hsiao points out that with the smart technology, the product quality could be improve significantly and the expense could be lowered greatly, which advances the productivity of manufacturers while reduces their reliability of traditional manpower model. Hence this is an inevitable trend to come. However, in order to activate this, an active market is the very premises for all these factors to move towards the goal.

Therefore, a market like Taiwan who sets China and the US as its main markets would be afflicted due to the trade war between these two markets now. Some Taiwanese suppliers in China seek to come back to the island, but there are some other issues in Taiwan need to be dealt with for them, such as manpower, land regulations as well as acquisition, and electricity. These issues cause those Taiwanese suppliers even greater obstacles and hinder their returning plans, leaving them stay in China to encounter business mergers. Taiwan’s economy development would loss autonomous if the above-mentioned situation is not well treated. Under these circumstances, the development of smart manufacturing in Taiwan is difficult.

Hsiao emphasizes that, market decides everything, and if the market is not active, everything is not possible. Hsiao believes that relying on the export market and southward policies is not as good as creating and expanding Taiwan’s domestic market. He thinks the government shall expand its infrastructure plan to upgrade Taiwan’s public systems, such as elevated railways, more high-ways, better public transportation systems, underground communication equipment systems, urban redraw projects, etc. Hsiao believes that with these efforts, Taiwan is able to become an international nation and its domestic market would become active, making the market suitable for further development.