Chen Yuguang/Taipei Report
NEXCOM has been established for more than 30 years. It started as a hardware manufacturer. The brand has developed a hardware manufacturing culture over a long period of time. In response to rapid changes in the industry, new technologies, new applications, and products in new fields are constantly being introduced. Industrial computers (IPC) are moving towards Industry 4.0, In the artificial intelligence IoT stage, Chairman Lin Maochang also led the company to actively transform into an AIoT Industry 4.0 overall solution innovation and entrepreneurship group, with the goal of bringing Taiwanese robots to the world stage with the EtherCAT open standard.
In recent years, NEXCOM Group’s development strategy has kept pace with the times. It has successfully broken away from the original thinking of a hardware manufacturer and developed its own business culture. Currently, all business units under the group that have solutions have become independent subsidiaries of the group, such as NEXCOM Group. Han Intelligent focuses on smart manufacturing plant-wide solutions, Chuangbo focuses on robot solutions and designs kits for robots, etc., playing an important role in future industry growth.
Lin Maochang believes that Taiwan’s PC industry can succeed because PCs adopt open standards. However, the current four major robot families, including ABB of Switzerland, KUKA of Germany, FANUC of Japan, and Yaskawa Electric of Japan, all have closed architectures, making it difficult to copy their technologies. , when there are no open standards for robots, they must start from scratch.
NEXCOM creates an open standard robot controller. This open standard is like a PC and can control robots of various configurations. Whether it is a three-axis, four-axis, or six-axis robot, it can be decomposed into The division of labor and cooperation of various parts and components make all kinds of robots fully compatible. It is hoped that this will allow the industry to flourish and drive Taiwan’s robot industry to enter the international market.
In August this year, NEXCOM announced that it would jointly launch the world’s first x86 collaborative safety robot with Intel, German advanced servo drive and safe motion module developer Synapticon, and Germany’s largest research institution Fraunhofer IWU. It is a three-way alliance between Taiwan and the United States and is implemented using open standards. The popularization of smart robots is promoting the digital transformation of global enterprises.
Lin Maochang said that NEXCOM does not make robots and is not an enemy of the robot industry. Instead, it is friends with all industries and provides robot solutions. For example, Damien Robot is the second largest brand of collaborative robots in the world. Its products are well-known and convenient. It uses NEXCOM Chuangbo’s controller, and their robot demonstration teaching device also uses Chuangbo’s products. When all robot manufacturers are willing to adopt open standards, based on EtherCAT and adding PC controllers, Taiwan’s Robots are spread all over the world.
Lin Maochang analyzed that the industrial Internet of Things market in mainland China is very large, but it is difficult to name the companies that dominate the Internet of Things. They say this is a fragmented market, but fragmentation is the result, not the cause. The main reason is the lack of open standards. , the four major families of robots all have closed architectures, and there are no open standards until now after the emergence of EtherCAT.
NEXCOM has been taking the lead, using EtherCAT and motion algorithms to create a fully compatible controller for robots and even entire smart machines. When it is fully compatible, it can divide labor and cooperate. Originally, a company had to do it from scratch. At the end of the day, tens of thousands of companies can now participate, flourish like the Internet era, and create a big market together.
Lin Maochang believes that Taiwan used to be the largest supplier of smartphone manufacturers, but now it is affected by the red supply chain and has gradually confiscated related hardware industries. However, when the topic is brought to the fields of smart machinery, robots, and smart manufacturing, because it involves software and hardware Integration requires high human quality and strong team spirit to create the entire solution.
And compared with other countries, Taiwan has an international reputation in the field of human resources quality and after-sales service. The Taiwanese people are good at providing services after the sale. Their quality of being responsible to the end has won the trust of overseas manufacturers. If they lead the world in achieving common use in the industry, Open standards will bring prosperity to Taiwan in the next 30 years, and it will be difficult for the red supply chain to catch up.
