A Model of AI in Practice: Award-winning FATEK Leads the Machine Tool Industry Toward Renewal

▲ At TIMTOS 2025 in Taipei, FATEK won the Energy Saving & Smart Product Innovation Merit Award and the Supreme Excellence Award of All CNC Machine Tools.

At the March 2025 awards ceremony of the Machine Tool R&D Innovation competition, a low-profile but formidable company took the top prize with its in-house BMC-135FTS high-load mill-turn boring machine. Its ability to bore, mill and turn on a single machine impressed the industry. That company is FATEK, part of the FEMCO group.

Using AI to solve customers’ problems

Walk into FATEK’s plant in Chiayi and it looks nothing like the traditional factory many people imagine. It is spacious, bright, comfortable and safe, and far from “grease-monkey” work. Above all, technology such as AI and AR is woven into daily operations, as if stepping into the future.

“Our goal is an all-round service AI. In the future customers may even talk to it through a phone app and get solutions quickly,” says Su Po-cheng, manager of FATEK’s new product development department. For the FEMCO group, AI is not a buzzword but an engineering philosophy: decades of accumulated experience become the training material for the service AI. Many solutions have already been digitized, and the work will continue so customers can identify and fix problems right away.

▲ The automated aluminum wheel line combines real-time monitoring, cloud-based intelligent predictive maintenance (IPM) and augmented/virtual-reality maintenance (AVR). It tracks equipment status, prevents unplanned downtime and supports remote-assisted repair, greatly raising productivity and utilization as a showcase of Industry 4.0. (Photo: ESG Times)

Lin Yen-ting, manager of the machine tool division, points to automatic load-displacement compensation for the worktable and chain-wear detection as examples of smart features already in use. “Smart sensors tell customers in advance when a chain needs replacing, so they avoid the losses of a breakage and downtime.” Applications like these are everywhere at FATEK, driven by a service culture that puts customers first.

▲ FATEK’s BMC-135TN CNC moving-column horizontal boring mill has a high-rigidity structure and high-torque spindle for heavy cutting and deep-hole machining. With digital-twin technology it simulates machine operation in real time, predicts maintenance needs and optimizes cutting parameters, serving the aerospace, automotive and energy industries.

“In the past, when a machine needed repair, customers usually called the agent or the manufacturer. We develop AI tools so customers can get an answer immediately and resolve issues as fast as possible,” says FEMCO President Liu Yu-chen. Changing customer habits takes time, he admits, but the group and FATEK will support them all the way; troubleshooting videos are a good example.

Manufacturing has long relied on veteran masters whose inspection and repair skills were passed on by word of mouth and hands-on teaching, which is hard to turn into SOPs. FATEK now turns repair know-how, assembly logic and parameter settings into video lessons that help customers respond quickly, train newcomers, and let overseas customers learn across languages and cultures.

▲ At TIMTOS 2025 a high-tech booth design made a strong visual impact. The innovative machines on display matched the theme and showed deep integration with future technology, a sign that FEMCO combines a strong technical foundation with a drive to keep moving toward smart manufacturing.

Building a more resilient machine tool industry

With AI and AR, machine tools are no longer silent steel but digital organs that can “speak”. FATEK plans to feed current, vibration and spindle-speed data into its AI models so equipment can warn of anomalies in real time and explain what happened and how to fix it.

FATEK machines skip over-designed interfaces in favor of solid, practical automation that solves real customer pain points, reduces labor and improves stability. As AI accelerates, FATEK keeps its machine tools at the front line of manufacturing, building a more resilient and sustainable industry with customers at home and abroad.

Source: ESG TIMES

2025-07-24 · ESG TIMES / Lee Chiao-chih

FEMCO: +886-5-276-6171 · www.femco.com.tw

FATEK: +886-5-213-3166 · www.fatek.com.tw