Day: January 15, 2023

The owner of a Vietnamese eatery in Taoyuan has been fined NT$300,000 (US$9,892) for violating firework storage rules after 166 kilograms of firecrackers and fireworks were seized from the store, the Taoyuan City Fire Department said Sunday.

Acting on a tip-off, city fire officials raided the eatery, located near the Taoyuan Train Station, on Saturday and seized the fireworks and firecrackers, which weighed nearly seven times the permitted amount under the Firework and Firecracker Management Act.

According to the law, no more than 25 kilograms of general fireworks and firecrackers can be stored, and violators face a fine ranging from NT$60,000 to NT$300,000.

Taoyuan fire authorities decided to impose the maximum fine on the store owner, according to the fire department.

The female owner surnamed Nguyen (?) said the firecrackers and fireworks were bought by her daughter on the internet and that she was not aware of the storage limit, the fire department said.

Lai Chih-chung (???), the head of the first brigade of the Taoyuan City Fire Department, said that because people set off firecrackers and fireworks during the Lunar New Year holiday, stores usually stockpile them in large quantities before the holidays to sell.

Fireworks and firecrackers are controlled products, however, and those who keep a larger than permitted quantity can be punished in accordance with the law, Lai said.

He reminded people, particularly foreign residents who are not familiar with the law, to pay heed to the regulations and rules to avoid incurring losses that outweigh the profits from firecracker sales.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

The Ankeng light rail transit (LRT) line will not open before the Lunar New Year holiday as had been hoped after the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) on Saturday said six issues had to be addressed before the line could make its debut.

In a statement issued Saturday, the MOTC said it had completed its inspection of the new tram line in New Taipei but that it identified six issues that needed fixing before the line could operate.

The problems raised by the MOTC were mainly cosmetic issues involving LRT stations, such as broken tiles, or missing safety indicators, such as stop signs or blueprints of wiring in transformer substations.

The MOTC also identified 11 issues that the LRT operator would need to be aware of when the system becomes operational and provided 12 suggestions to improve the line’s service once it starts carrying passengers.

The new light rail line covers nine LRT stations over a distance of 7.5 kilometers and is expected to cut the commutes of Ankeng area residents to other parts of New Taipei and Taipei by 15 to 20 minutes.

The new LRT line had initially eyed a launch date before the end of 2022, but couldn’t meet it because of inflation issues and a lack of workers, according to New Taipei Mayor Hou Yu-ih (???).

In response to the MOTC report, Hou said Sunday that the city was confident the six problems addressed by the MOTC will be rectified quickly.

A follow-up inspection report will be submitted by the city to the MOTC after the Lunar New Year, Hou said, expressing confidence the LRT line would begin operating very soon.

Hou also addressed the Executive Yuan’s recent approval of the Xizhi-Donghu Line to be run by Metro Taipei which will link Neihu District in Taipei to Xizhi District in New Taipei and eventually connect to the planned Keelung Metro.

He said he hoped that the traffic issue that has long-plagued New Taipei’s Xizhi District will be resolved once the metro service is completed.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

A China-based subsidiary of Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry, known as Foxconn globally, has been selected for the sixth time as the builder of a “lighthouse factory” by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Foxconn Industrial Internet Co. (FII), the Shanghai-listed company based in the southeastern Chinese city of Shenzhen, said in a statement last week that its Guanlan campus had been included in the WEF’s Global Lighthouse Network (GLN), a community of manufacturing sites and value chains that are leaders in the adoption of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies.

The Guanlan campus — which follows five other FII or FII-affiliated GLN sites in Shenzhen, Qinhuangdao, Chengdu, Wuhan, and Zhengzhou — is also the first of its kind focusing on precision metal processing, FII said.

The campus was one of 29 GLN sites announced by the WEF on Jan. 13, joining the ranks of 132 leading manufacturers in the world, according to the international organization.

FII was able to achieve agile product introduction, quick capacity ramp-up, and smart mass production by deploying 4IR technologies in response to their customers’ needs for the rapid release of new smartphone products and strict quality standards, the WEF said.

FII’s application of 4IR has accelerated new product introduction by 29 percent, led to 50-percent faster ramp-ups, reduced quality non-conformance by 56 percent, and reduced manufacturing cost by 30 percent, it said.

In 2018, the WEF and consulting firm McKinsey started the first lighthouse network list, recognizing nine manufacturing plants in a survey of the digital transformation of more than 1,000 factories.

The term “lighthouse factories” refers to production plants that have adopted 4IR technologies, including AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) in their daily operations.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel