Taiwan is bringing together the best of its talent, enterprises and technologies to help overseas manufacturers and inventors bring their IoT product to market in a faster and more cost-effective way.

The Institute for Information Industry of Taiwan, an organisation supporting the development of the nation’s information industry, is expanding its IoT manufacturing base services to foreign inventors.

The IoT Service Hub understands that not all manufacturers have the same level of technological know-how or experience in undertaking such innovations. It offers three key services:

• Providing AIoT evaluation board made by Taiwan’s IC companies to assist product development;
• Connecting start-up or product to interdisciplinary experts in Taiwan; and
• Providing AIoT technology to help the industrial digital transformation.

First, the hub can help AIoT product developers lower their technical and technological thresholds to speed up the prototype development and entire mass production process.

The hub has released several AIoT evaluation boards through cooperation with Taiwanese semiconductor companies. It also makes a Taiwan IC-based development toolkit for various transmission applications, and offer assistance such as coordinate files for PCB, BoM, Gerber file and SMT proofing to lower the technological threshold and accelerate production.

Secondly, the hub connects inventors to more than 200 cross-industry corporate partners and experts, including system integrators, mass production and designers across Taiwan’s manufacturing industry chain. It also provides technical consultations and critical assessments.

Building on this service, the hub is organising an international manufacturing service, with numerous companies expected to start assisting international mass production of prototypes in 2022.

Thirdly, the hub product managers are on hand to facilitate each production phase for a project. Individual case managers provide in-depth management for each potential case, and arrange resource services including case consultation and resource introduction.

Since its founding in 2018, the hub has supported more than 400 IoT smart manufacturing innovations, of which 100 have been brought to market.

Nowadays, the hub has spurred digital transformation in key industries, such as creating smart isolation rooms for remote care at a long-term care centre for the elderly, and 3EGreen Technology’s IoT power usage monitor that assists traditional food factories in reducing their carbon footprints towards achieving net zero carbon emissions.