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The purpose of this paper is to develop a new approach for equipment states prediction and provide a method for early warning of possible trouble states.

A new two-stage multi-level equipment state classification system was proposed to forecast equipment operation status. The first stage involves predicting the equipment's normal state, and the second stage involves forecasting the equipment's abnormal status. Meanwhile, the equipment state classification is done according to the manufacturing company's internal specifications to define various equipment statuses. Then, the trouble state and waiting state were predicted by grey state prediction model.

A new two-stage multi-level equipment status classification system and a new approach for equipment states prediction has been proposed in this paper.

The application on a real-world case shown that the model is very effective for predicting equipment state. The equipment's major failure risk can be reduced significantly.

The proposed approach can help improve the effective prediction of the equipment's various operation states and reduce the equipment's major failure risk and thus maintenance costs.

The purpose of this paper is to solve the problem of quality prediction in the equipment production process and provide a method to deal with abnormal data and solve the problem of data fluctuation.

The analytic hierarchy process-process failure mode and effect analysis (AHP-PFMEA) structure tree is established based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and process failure mode and effect analysis (PFMEA). Through the failure mode analysis table of the production process, the weight of the failure process and stations is determined, and the ranking of risk failure stations is obtained so as to find out the serious failure process and stations. The spectrum analysis method is used to identify the fault data and judge the “abnormal” value in the fault data. Based on the analysis of the impact, an “offset operator” is designed to eliminate the impact. A new moving average denoise operator is constructed to eliminate the “noise” in the original random fluctuation data. Then, DGM (1,1) model is constructed to predict the production process quality.

It is discovered the “offset operator” can eliminate the impact of specific shocks effectively, moving average denoise operator can eliminate the “noise” in the original random fluctuation data and the practical application of the shown model is very effective for quality predicting in the equipment production process.

The proposed approach can help provide a good guidance and reference for enterprises to strengthen onsite equipment management and product quality management. The application on a real-world case showed that the DGM (1,1) grey discrete model is very effective for quality predicting in the equipment production process.

The offset operators, including an offset operator for a multiplicative effect and an offset operator for an additive effect, are proposed to eliminate the impact of specific shocks, and a new moving average denoise operator is constructed to eliminate the “noise” in the original random fluctuation data. Both the concepts of offset operator and denoise operator with their calculation formulas were first proposed in this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the chemistry of organic compounds with a liquid crystal phase and their application in flat panel electronic displays.

The paper is a review of liquid crystal display (LCD) technology. It provides an introduction to liquid crystals and LCDs, with an emphasis on their historical development, various LCD technologies employed, their electronic interconnection to driver circuitry and failure analysis.

The current world market for LCDs is being driven by flat panel television sales. As well as their use in television sets, they are to be found in aircraft cockpit instrumentation, computer monitors, mobile phones and digital cameras, all of which would not exist in their present form without liquid crystals.

The paper provides an introduction to LCDs for electronic engineers working in this area, who may be unfamiliar with the chemistry of liquid crystals, LCD technology, electronic interconnection and failure analysis.

Summarizes the flat panel display (FPD) industry outside of Japan, with a focus on advances in Korea and Taiwan. Discusses the major manufacturers in each country as well as their current status. Concludes with a brief discussion on the future outlook of the FPD market.

This paper aims to answer two research questions: what latecomer advantages and disadvantages they had, and what strategies they employed to utilize the advantages or to surmount the disadvantages.

After reviews of the literatures on latecomers' characteristics and the notable rise of Taiwanese thin‐film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT‐LCD) panel manufacturers in the global manufacturing contexts, this research project combined secondary industrial sector data analysis and individual company case study (AUO Ltd) approaches in order to build a conceptual framework and identify latecomers' (dis)advantages.

This paper advances the existing literature on latecomer advantages and disadvantages by reviewing the spectacular rise of Taiwanese TFT‐LCD panel manufacturers and reveals the importance of some unexplored source of latecomer advantage such as the competition dynamics which is proved to be vital for Taiwanese firms to successfully penetrate into the market. The paper finds the influence of technological regime and argues that the incremental technological advance rather than radical innovation provides latecomers with opportunity to utilize the learning curve effect. It has also discovered new forms of latecomer advantages, for example the free‐rider effect of improved equipment due to suppliers' own learning curve. This paper illustrates the necessity of adequate exploration on technology and product features to understand firms' strategic behaviors. Moreover, the subtle tactics found in this case study may enlighten other latecomers.

The study leaves a number of questions unanswered which warrant more attention. First, the theoretical arguments and experiences from this single case are not easily extendable to the other industries. Broader investigation should be helpful to discover the mechanism between latecomer advantage, strategy and performance. Second, the study of latecomer (dis)advantages and strategies should take the firm features into account to get a whole picture. Third, the examination of interactions between latecomer (dis)advantages and more detailed analytical framework are needed.

Although latecomers' characteristics and strategies have been discussed for many years since Asia economy emerged, TFT‐LCD industry is a relatively new and fast growing industry. How can a latecomer play an important role in emerging industry growing phase? This is novel in contrast with classical latecomer's model in established industry.

Today, most of the high technology products around us require high performance semiconductors, and information technology (IT) is fully utilized in these products. The IT revolution is due largely to the remarkable progress of semi‐conductor technology. Robots are expected to handle larger size wafers under various levels of vacuum and clean environments, in order to permit semi‐conductor manufacturing equipment to realize higher density and performance in the twenty‐first century. Twenty years have passed since liquid crystal Displays (LCD) were introduced into the market and now LCDs are used widely. LCDs, which are based on thin film transistors (TFT) have been used especially in displays for PCs, mobile telephones and digital cameras, and now recently in flat‐screen TVs. Under these circumstances, LCD device makers are enlarging the size of glass plates in order to achieve higher productivity. Along with these trends, the robots used in LCD manufacturing systems are required to cope with the market needs for enlarging the size of glass plates. This paper introduces the trend in the next generation of robot technology for the semi‐conductor and LCD industries, coping with larger wafers, higher density and larger LCD glass plates.

The penultimate article in this series commences with a few remarks about the size and ebullience of the market for ‘output’ devices, followed by a consideration of display techniques. The functioning of a Cathode Ray Tube display is explained, moving on to colour tubes and the steadily improving methods for handling colour and graphics. The article gives a brief description of alternative displays including plasma, electroluminescent, liquid crystal, and light emitting diode panels.

This paper aims to design the circuit for electromagnetic interface (EMI) reduction in liquid crystal display (LCD).

The cascode level shifter and segmented driver circuit are applied in LCD column driver integrated circuit (IC) for EMI reduction. Cascode current mirror is used in the proposed level shifter for DC voltage biasing and reduction of the driving current which passes through the level shifter. The on-off switching currents and transient times are measured and compared between the conventional and proposed level shifters. Additionally, a segmented data latch is obtained by the timing spread solution in data latch, and applied to split the large peak switching current into a number of smaller peak current. The timing spread-operation does not actually reduce the total power of the noise, instead, it spreads the noise power evenly over the frequency bandwidth. The optimal number of latch is dependent on the operating frequency and EMI allowance. The column driver IC and clock controller are integrated in 0.18 μm CMOS technology with 1-poly and 4-metal process.

The post-layout simulation shows that the proposed column driver circuit for LCD driver IC significantly reduces the peak switching current, and it results in the reduction of EMI noise level by more than 15 dB. It is obtained with 20 segmented operations in data latch at 40 MHz frequency.

The advantage of the cascode current source is that it can provide a well-controlled bias current with an accurate current transfer ratio. To reduce the EMI noise in LCD driver circuit, the cascode current source is properly located for the DC bias block in the level shifter. The application is rarely done by others, and a significant EMI noise reduction is found. The well-controlled current source provides a high performance switching in the level shifter.

Flexible hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) solar cells have many advantages, including lower weight, good flexibility and light sensitivity. Moreover, a-Si:H solar cells can be used as sensors, as indoor light sources and can also generate electricity. These solar cells are suitable for the design of portable systems and curved materials. The purpose of this study was to integrate flexible a-Si:H solar cells and wearable technology and to apply the dual functions of photovoltaics and photo sensors to smart clothing and eyewear.

The integration of flexible a-Si:H solar cells and tri-colour light-emitting diodes (LEDs) was used to develop smart auto-flashing clothing. In addition, we combined flexible a-Si:H solar cells and twisted nematic (TN) liquid crystal (LC) cells to design smart self-activation eyewear.

The maximum power resistance value of flexible a-Si:H solar cells was used to deduce the equation of solar cell voltage value generated by different percentages of SUN (100% SUN means 100 mW/cm²). A solar cell was used as a photo sensor that connects a resistor in a series to the Arduino to detect the voltage value, and then different percentages of SUN are calculated from the equation. Applying the deduced equation to the smart phone APP and Arduino code, we developed a human–machine interface (HMI) to facilitate user operation.

In this study, the flexible a-Si:H solar cell performs the function of not only photovoltaic power generation but also that of a photo sensor. The smart auto-flashing clothing is suitable for traffic guides, joggers and people engaging in other night activities. This smart self-activating eyewear can adjust to light and protect the eyes.

This study aims to refocus the analysis of global political economies using concepts from studies on Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) to track Taiwan’s rise in the Thin Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display (TFT-LCD) industry. Taiwanese electronics firms began to outpace their competitors from Japan in TFT-LCD industry’s competition from about the year 2000.

Drawing on depth interviews and analysis of secondary source material, newspaper and magazine.

A time factor that helps determine advantage and/or disadvantage of high-tech industry in Japan and Taiwan. Stable organizational structure and less talent mobility in the Japanese TFT-LCD firms may well have been an advantage initially in the transformation process from US firms’ experimental technologies to tacit mass production technologies, but proved to be a disadvantage in the subsequent competition with more mobile talent in Taiwanese firms eager to standardize mass production techniques. Japanese firms’ rigid organizational structure could not keep pace to the market-oriented technology strategy in the global TFT-LCD industry, lost competitive advantage in a rapid pace.

VoC literature should be focused to highlight two insights. The first is the premise of institutional forms specific to national models of capitalism. Patterns of technology transfer appear critical in the innovation process, and differ markedly between Taiwan and Japan. Second, the VoC literature suggests comparative institutional advantage.

Through the comparative analyses between Taiwanese capitalism model and Japanese counterparts, we can understand the reason and process of the rise of Taiwan in global TFT-LCD market.