Chin Fong bridges industries with leading customer-centric innovations

Taipei 101, Taiwan's iconic skyscraper, is undoubtedly significant to Jack Chao, president of Chin Fong Machine Industrial. The company has supplied 80 per cent of the machinery used in Taiwan's liquid crystal display (LCD) screen manufacturing industry. The sheer volume would reach twice the height of Taipei 101 if the press machines were horizontally stacked up together.

Becoming the dominant machinery supplier to the LCD industry within just a decade underlines the company's transformation into a total solutions provider. "This is the industrial trend nowadays - to create value-added products that satisfy customers' needs," Chao says.

While rapid growth in the LCD industry precipitated the transformation, Chin Fong has long been renowned for its product quality and innovation, especially in the automotive industry, where Toyota, Mazda, Isuzu, Mitsubishi Motors and Yamaha are among its clients. The company is the largest provider of mechanical power presses in Taiwan. It has been awarded for its press technology achievements since 1975, the outcome of the company's research and development (R&D) focus and deep ties with Japanese industrial players.

Its production process is likewise anchored on the lean manufacturing principles of the Toyota production system, which emphasises total quality and production management. Chin Fong managed to bridge these principles to the LCD industry when it started working with clients on their production facilities based on the size and volume of flat panels to be manufactured and budgets available for factories. This total solutions approach led to production leaps in the LCD industry and has proven invaluable to Chin Fong.

"We are proud to say that we help our customers configure their process," Chao says. "More production lines can be set up in a limited factory area by changing the layout of the press line, and this eventually increases the overall manufacturing capacity. As the flat-panel industry matures, we help our customers adapt very quickly with a complete configuration for the press machine line."

Technology elevation