Have you ever gone on a trip and not had any problems? I’m fairly certain that a problem-free trip is pretty much impossible, but it was almost smooth sailing for my husband and me when we traveled to Taiwan for an Advantech AASECO conference last fall.
Sigh. So close.
I can’t really complain though, because our biggest “hurdle” was due to my own forgetfulness! We had just finished an interesting morning bus tour of local museums, temples, a traditional tea house, and a famous pottery factory, when I realized that my glasses were missing (uh –oh I can’t see….). I dragged my husband all over the city, trying to find a drugstore pair that could replace my missing pair for a few days until we returned home but had no luck. I was upset that my glasses were gone. My husband was upset with me for being careless and wasting all of that time on a fruitless search for new glasses. The worst part was that I am known in my family for always leaving my glasses somewhere – and in this case, halfway around the world.
Some things, like refusing to wear my glasses and then losing them, never seem to change.
Thankfully, L-Tron’s Premier Partner, Advantech does make positive changes from time-to-time in order to better serve their customer. Advantech was founded in 1983 by three former Hewlett-Packard engineers. Throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s Advantech has won numerous awards for the Company’s development of outstanding applications, systems and instruments.
Today, Advantech offers comprehensive system integration, hardware, software, customer-centric design services, and global logistics support. When we asked Ming-Chin Wu, Advantech’s Industrial Automation Group President, about how Advantech has evolved over the years to embrace new industry trends, here’s what he said.
“Advantech uses the “IMAX” structure to form our innovation platform. Basically, we embrace new industry trends and keep pace with technical and product innovation through the following four approaches. The aforementioned four approaches go hand in hand and complement each other.
- The I Approach: I is short for Incubation and it means internal bred.
- The M Approach: M is for Merger, and it also includes acquisition.
- The A Approach: A refers to Alliance and it is an external strategic alliances approach.
- The X Approach: X (X Product) is through cooperation with academy for the unknown and future early innovative product research and development. In the past decade, cooperating with academy was the most important way for us to develop a culture of innovation. Together with Taiwan’s leading colleges such as National Taiwan University and National Chiao Tung University, we explored to many new application fields and industry trends.
I am grateful that companies like Advantech have the foresight to stay cutting edge and ahead of the technology curve – this particular story has a happy ending!
The afternoon following our morning tour, we decided to board another bus for a tour of Old Taipei. As my good luck would have it (must have been the good luck Taiwan jade I purchased), the bus coincidentally happened to be the same bus we had ridden earlier that day. I still can hardly believe my good fortune – my glasses were right in the seat where I had left them!
