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Innovation Taiwan-style
By Paul E. Teague, Chief Editor -- Design News, July 18, 1999
"Made in Taiwan" has taken on a whole new cachet in recent years, signifying quality in product design and manufacturing. For proof, you only have to look at the products that won this year's Taiwan National Awards of Excellence.
The three-phase contest, judged by a panel of experts, gets hundreds of entries every year. In the most recent contest, judges selected 394 products to enter the second phase of the competition, where 27 products received the national award. Nine of those 27 received the Gold National Award of Excellence, which includes NT$2 million in cash for first-time recipients and a meeting with Republic of China President Lee Teng-hui, among other honors.
The winning products were not all consumer devices. Included among the award recipients were these products that may be of interest to design engineers:
A dc brushless cooling fan from ADDA Corp. It's designed for high-performance notebook PCs.
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A vertical machining center from Fair Friend Co. Ltd. Applications: low- to high-speed cutting.
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Linear bearings from HIWIN Technologies Corp. Reportedly, they enable high-precision linear motion on round shafts by using recirculating balls.
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A dicing saw from Yang Iron Works Co. Ltd. It's designed for precision sawing of silicon wafers.
The Awards sponsors say the winners embody the concept of "Innovalue." It's a catchy term meant to connote the ability to use innovation to add value in the design process, and it's part of the official symbol for the Awards.
Of course, there can be another side to "Innovalue." It can also refer to the value in innovation itself. Does innovation have intrinsic value of its own? Yes, because it represents the creative process at its best, where engineers look for new ways to solve design problems.
That's true not only in Taiwan and the rest of Asia, but in Europe and North America as well.
