“Girls, guests are coming. Go give them an introduction.” On a March day Taiwan's biggest-ever machine tools exhibition occupies all the halls of the Taipei World Trade Center, both downtown and at the new Nangang Hall. Even though the trade show includes more than 5,000 booths, total corporate demand had been for 7,500 booths — over 2,000 more than organizers could squeeze in. In a corner of Exhibition Hall No. 2, Zhou Yan Bo, sales manager for Wafangdian Kaiwei Fine Bearing Manufacturing Co., sees reporters approaching, and gestures to his female staffers.

Clad in a lightweight gray zippered jacket, with sharp-toed black loafers on his feet, he is sitting in the company booth with Derek Wong of international sales. The two are taking advantage of the early morning lull in exhibition visitors to discuss the reactions of Taiwanese clients during the exhibition.

Browsing for Supply Chain Data

Wafangdian City, in Liaoning Province, is known as the bearing capital of China, and manufacturing companies both large and small habitually include the city's name in their corporate monikers. The city is an important link in the supply chain for China's machine tool industry development.

Kaiwei sells most of its bearing components to companies manufacturing complete casting and turning machines used in the technology industry and in automotive assembly lines. The state-run enterprise Wuhan Wuzhong Casting & Forging Co. often makes use of Kaiwei components.

In its first visit to the Taiwan exhibition, Kaiwei hopes to become a supplier to Taiwanese manufacturers of whole machine tools, such as Victor Taichung Machinery Works Co., Ltd. They also hope to collect information on Taiwan's supply chain manufacturers.

Taiwan is the world's number four machine tool exporter, behind Japan, Germany and Italy, with yearly exports totaling US$3 billion. Nearly 50 percent of those exports go to Hong Kong and China — Taiwan being a major supplier of equipment for China's manufacturing sector.

The machinery industry has a shot this year at becoming Taiwan's third trillion-Taiwan-dollar industry (after semiconductors and video display units). There are more than 10,000 companies involved in the upstream and downstream supply chain in the Taichung area alone, making it the world's most densely concentrated machine tool industry cluster.

China's machinery industry has now become quite interested in integrating this piece of the supply chain and, to that end, Zhejiang Yonglida CNC Machine Tools Co., Ltd. has applied to establish a presence in Taiwan in the wake of the signing of the economic framework cooperation agreement (ECFA).