Lean Smart Manufacturing in Taiwan—Focusing on the Bicycle Industry

Abstract

Industry 4.0, started in Germany in 2011, was fervently promoted by various advanced countries and followed by the introduction of “smart manufacturing”. As an innovative strategy of the manufacturing industry “smart manufacturing” has attracted considerable attention in the field of academics and practice. However, the issues of huge investment and differentiation of individual enterprises have created a big gap between policy promotion and production at the site of actual industrial manufacturing and resulted in limited progress in smart manufacturing. In view of the situation, the authors have previously developed in relation to the practice of individual companies in the industry a practical structure of “Lean Smart Manufacturing: a conceptual framework and solution based co-creative platform” combining Lean Production with smart manufacturing to achieve customer value. In addition to filling the gap between government policy and industry in Industry 4.0, the practical structure suggests the possibility of balancing differentiation and open innovation. Taiwan’s bicycle industry is one of Taiwan's most internationally competitive industries. GIANT, the leading manufacturer of bicycles in Taiwan, has been actively promoting TPS since 2000. With the development of Industry 4.0, GIANT has been working on the application of Industry 4.0 related technologies in order to further enhance customer value. In the application of the practical structure of “Lean Smart Manufacturing”, there are few cases of corporate practice. This study focuses on the A-Team which is constructed by the bicycle industry in Taiwan and GIANT for empirical research, to see how GIANT implement the “Lean Smart Manufacturing” and construct the co-creative platform, to balance differentiation and open innovation, then strengthen its competitiveness. The research results show that although this case is still in the development stage, it has the basic form of “Lean Smart Manufacturing: a conceptual framework and solution based co-creative platform”. This case, as we advocate the use of differentiated advantages of “Lean Smart Manufacturing”, pragmatically from the establishment of the smart factory platform on the physical system, gradually extended to the strategic co-creative platform of the cyber system.