New Thinking for the Development of Taiwan's Services Sector with the Emergence of Smart Manufacturing

Abstract

The world today faces challenges including energy, resource efficiency, urbanization, and talent structure changes. Germany's Industry 4.0 project and the United States' advanced manufacturing initiatives are both plans to confront and mitigate these challenges, bringing new changes for the manufacturing sector. With active investment in the development of smart manufacturing from countries in Europe and North America, the "servitization" of global manufacturing seems inevitable. In the face of this wave of servitization, Taiwan should use its accumulated advantages in the ICT field to find innovative service models that integrate manufacturing and services in response to the broader trends of the industry environment. This could be a feasible path for breaking the current bottleneck faced by Taiwan's service industry.