AI-based smart manufacturing boosts productivity, green transition: AUO chairman

Taipei, July 17 (CNA) Artificial intelligence (AI)-based smart manufacturing enhances a manufacturer's productivity and energy efficiency which helps reduce their carbon footprint, the chairman of a major Taiwan display panel maker said at a forum in Taipei on Wednesday.

Discussing how manufacturing industry is transformed by AI at the forum, Paul Peng (彭双浪), chairman of AUO Corp., said the company has changed its production mode "from reactive to predictive management."

"The manufacturing process of the display panel is long, with many nodes to be overseen, taking 20 days to 40 days, the longest from glass substrate to the final product," he noted.

Since around 2014, following the idea of Industry 4.0, or smart manufacturing utilizing big data analysis and digital tools, the company changed to "predictive management," predicting the result of the next node if changes are made in the previous node, Peng explained.

The production yield percentage (the proportion of non-defective products out of the total) naturally increased, he said, noting that "how well we could respond to customers' needs also improved, as we could accurately predict the amount and time needed for production."

It is very different from the reactive management approach to solving problems only after defects are found, he stressed.

With AI and Internet of Things (IoT), Peng said his company has further developed an "adaptive control model" for manufacturing -- a technique that allows one to adjust parameters in real time -- that "ensures the results are all good," he continued.

"Our productivity in 2023 increased 40 percent compared to 2018," because of the new manufacturing model, Peng said, adding that energy efficiency and carbon footprint have also been improved.

Meanwhile, the AUO chairman underlined the need to cultivate AI talent, noting that AUO was one of the first six companies to initiate the building of the Taiwan AI Academy in 2018.

"We have been investing in AI talent cultivation since 2018, sending our employees to the academy," he added.

AUO has also expanded from display panel specialization to total solutions for AI-based smart manufacturing, he said.

Taiwan has the advantage of making better progress in the area of digital transition and the green transition based on it, as it has more than 40 years of experience in information and communications technology, the AUO chairman added.

However, the past horizontal division of labor has to be changed to vertical integration.

"The competition in the future is not inter-enterprise but inter-ecosystem, so enterprises have to find strategic partners to co-thrive in the ecosystem and expand the value of their products," Peng said.