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are Germany’s Industry 4.0, the United States’ Advanced
Manufacturing Partnership (AMP), mainland China’s Made in
China 2025, and Japan’s National Robotic Initiative.
Taiwan, with its population set to decline by as much as
250,000 annually in the coming years and with its reliance
on exports for economic growth and therefore an urgent
need to further boost the competitiveness of its industries,
has been no exception in launching a major initiative of this
sort. The Productivity 4.0 project, initiated by the Ministry
of Economic Affairs (MOEA) in 2015, aims to upgrade the
nation’s industry through, among other methods, the
adoption and development of core technologies. The goal
of the project, which focuses on nine key sectors, is to boost
the Taiwan manufacturing industry’s annual per capita
production to NT$10 million (US$310,000) within a decade,
an increase of 60% compared with the level for 2014. This will
promote Taiwan as a leader of high-value productivity in the
Asia-Pacific region, which it is hoped will help improve the
sports and leisure sector’s competitiveness and position in
international markets.
The Taiwan Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association
has established a Taiwan S-Team Elite League (S-team) to
consolidate domestic fitness equipment-related sectors by
moving from competition to cooperation so as to integrate
and improve related domestic industrial chains. The goal,
through “key component standardization” and “refined
management,” is to develop Taiwan into a “first-rate global
fitness equipment R&D and manufacturing center” in order to
boost the sector’s international competitiveness and ability
to tap business opportunities in global markets through
product and service differentiation.
In the spirit of the “Productivity 4.0” initiative, the Industrial
Development Bureau, MOEA, has provided guidance and
assistance to a member of the S-team under the Smart
Automation Industry Development Project in developing an
automated guided vehicle system for the fitness equipment
assembly line, as well as functional automated inspection,
signal extraction, production database and production
history systems.
The example above represents only the starting point
in terms of applying Productivity 4.0 to the sports and
leisure industry to assist in upgrading the sector through
enhancement of automation and intelligent technology
in the production process. This will be pursued in concert
with another major MOEA initiative, namely the “Industry
Upgrading and Transformation Action Plan.” Through
various measures, such as financial subsidies and tax and
investment incentives, the aim is to spur Taiwan’s sports
and leisure industry in the direction of higher added-value
creation, greater productivity, and increased international
competitiveness, thereby boosting the industry’s exports
by enabling enterprises in the sector to achieve the goal of
transforming challenge into opportunity.