Fantastic Taiwan - MTConnect Trip of a Lifetime!

I was asked to come to Taiwan Dr. Kao of the National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences (KUAS).  Words can not describe how great it was to be in Taiwan!   It was the absolute best I have ever been treated in my life!  It was an absolute honor to be there and have the chance to discuss MTConnect.  I can not thank Dr. Kao and Alan Wei, Manager of the Precision Machinery Research & Development Center (PMC),  enough.  As you will see in the rest of this blog, there are many, many individuals who I am VERY THANKFUL to!

From the right to left is Dr. Kao of National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences (KUAS), Benjamin B. C. Jan, General Manager of the Precision Machinery Research & Development Center (PMC), Terry of PMC.  I am sorry that I do not remember who is behind us and my camera is not that great as well.  We had a fantastic dinner together.  It was a real honor to meet and have dinner with such important individuals.

The food was AMAZING in Taiwan.  I learned that the food is much better and much fresher in Taiwan versus the restaurants I have been to in the United States.

Above is my hotel, the Windsor Hotel in Taichung at night from the restaurant we went to above.  It was a very nice hotel.

Below is the first slide of my 71 slide presentation I gave on Thursday August 9th in Taiwan.  My presentation went a little over three hours.

Above is a slide that I like to use that shows the difference between MTConnect and proprietary protocols that puts the onus of what the data means on the application developers.  As I stated at the conference, the developer dies of old age wasting their time trying to figure how and what the proprietary data means.  The beauty of MTConnect is all the hard work that went into the data dictionary or MTConnect XML Schema Definition.  This makes life exponentially easier for software developers.

Below is a picture of me in front of the conference where I gave a seminar on MTConnect.

Above is a dinner we had at the Windsor Hotel at the Zhe Abalone Restaurant that was great.

Below is a picture of the speakers on the newspaper in Taiwan.

 

Above is the President of ECOCA - Shawn Sung.   I receive a private tour from Mr. Sung of his ECOCA factory. It was very impressive how much ECOCA has progressed since Mr. Sung took over.  I also received a tour of their demo area from ECOCA employees.

Above is the first slide of my hands-on lab in Taiwan.  I put together 145 slides for the hands on lab that started about 9:15 in the morning and we ended after 3pm.  

This is the class members - most of which had Ph.D.s  They were a fantastic class and it was my honor to share MTConnect with them.  During the break, Dr. Katie Mei asked me to write a 1,500 to 2,500 word article on MTConnect for the Taiwan Machine Tool and Accessory Magazine -- which I was honored to do.   I wrote a 2,349 word article, included some graphics and send it in this past Thursday to Dr. Mei.

Above is a photo of the drinks I had for the hands-on lab.  I had many types of tea, a coke and ice tea.  It was very nice to have such a wide choice of beverages.

 Above is Wyatt Wu and Joseph.  I created the fictional Wyatt and Joseph Software (WJS) company as the MTConnect Shop Floor Monitoring Company that was creating a business based on MTConnect and monitoring a shop floor.  Wyatt and Joseph were very kind in allowing me to create this company and even more kind in bringing me this photo at our dinner Saturday night!   I said that if they do create WJS, I want to have the opportunity to purchase stock in the company.

 Above is the agenda of the hands-on lab.  As you can see, we covered A LOT OF INFORMATION.   I would like to thank Will Sobel, President of System Insights and Chief Architect of MTConnect and John Turner, President of FA Consulting & Technology (FAC  & T), for their review and suggestions on my hands-on lab.  It was very much appreciated and really improved the lab.  I am very lucky to have the opportunity to learn from Will and John.

Above is Alan Wei, Manager of the Precision Machinery Research & Development Center (PMC),  Alan was giving me a great tour of PMC.  I was really IMPRESSED with PMC!  The MTConnect Institute is looking forward to both PMC and KUAS joining MTConnect.  Alan was a great host!

Paul Warndorf, VP and Chief Manufacturing Technology Officer for AMT - The Association For Manufacturing Technology, look forward to the discussions regarding a Memorandum Of Understanding between PMC and the MTConnect Institute with Alan Wei.   Below is a signature block with David  in Chinese, that Alan Wei gave to me on Saturday morning when he met me at the hotel to say goodbye.  Thanks Alan, very cool!

Below is an acoustic lab that PMC has for testing machine tools and other equipment.

Above is a YCM machine tool.

I was very impressed with the number and quality of machine tools at PMC as well as the labs below.

Above was a dinner we had Friday night after the MTConnect Hands-On Lab course.  Everyone was so friendly and so nice.  I am very lucky individual to have had the opportunity to go to Taiwan!

Alan Wei has an original Mini Cooper!  He let me sit in it which was very cool!  My wife has a Mini Cooper S convertible and I have always wanted to sit in an original Mini Cooper, so this was very cool for me!

Prior to going up in Taipei 101, Terry, Vienna and I had lunch at Din Tai Fung which had the amazing XiaoLongBao ever!  which was an AMAZING restaurant!   Above is me in front of artists image of Taiwan in the Taipei 101 building.

Above is me in front of Taipei 101 - the second tallest building in the world!

Above is photo from the 89th floor.  I went up in the world's fastest elevator according Guinness Book of World Records.

Below is a 360 degree photo of the National Palace Museum.

 Above is me in front of the National Palace Museum.

 Above is a temple in Taipei.

Above is Terry on the left and Kenny on the right.  Behind us is, on the left hand side, Vienna (Terry's girlfriend) and on the right behind us is Avien who is Kenny's girlfriend.  It was incredibly nice of all four of them to give up a good part of their weekend to take me around Taipei, have dinner with me and take me to the airport.  It was a real honor and privilege to meet them and spend time with them on that Saturday.

I received some very nice gifts as well including a small robot (above) that understands Chinese and speaks accordingly to what commands you say, a very nice chop stick, fork and spoon set as well as pineapple cake cookies I enjoyed and of course the signature block that Alan gave me!

Above is Kenny Chang dropping me off at the airport in Taipei.

Below is my summary slide which everyone seemed to like where I said that MTConnect was the answer to Easy-to _____  statements below and I put the MTConnect logo in the middle of the gateway image and said that "MTConnect is the key to all of those four key components that were the theme of the conference.

 
Taiwan was great and it was the best I have ever been treated in my entire life!  The MTConnect Institute is really looking forward to working closely with PMC and KUAS!