Over the past decade Taiwan's furniture manufacturers have been striving to cope with price competition from rivals in developing-economy countries-especially mainland China-by shifting from mass-production items with a high manual input to products featuring greater technological input, multiple functions, and sophisticated designs for upscale markets around the world.

Makers of office furniture have been most aggressive in this transition toward more classy products, especially those aimed at younger consumers. And Taiwan, they say, is the best place to turn out office-automation (OA) furniture in small amounts and large varieties.

Among the OA furniture makers that have been turning to upmarket products is Chueng Shine Co., one of the island's few specialized makers of high-end OA chairs. Keeping its production base in Taiwan, the company concentrates on the development of innovative and highly functional products.

Chueng Shine began life in 1981 as a hardware-product processor in Taipao, in Taiwan's southern Chiayi County, and transformed itself into a maker of OA chairs in 1988. Subsequent development has left the company with an integrated production line that turns out products with a 70% local-content rate. Company executives boast that they can handle all critical manufacturing processes in-house, including iron and steel shearing, forming, and processing. In view of environment-protection requirements, highly polluting processes such as electroplating and paint-spraying are subcontracted to supporting factories with their own pollution-control facilities.

"All of the products we make are recyclable and can be reused in compliance with the environment-protection regulations adopted by the industrially advanced nations," stresses Lu We-chin, Chueng Shine's president. "For instance, we employ environment-friendly PP (polypropylene) instead of toxic PVC (polyvinyl chloride), and we cut down on the use of formalin in wooden plates. At the same time, we enhance the structure of our products by adopting specially designed mechanisms."



Maintaining ISO Standards



Thanks to its constant efforts to improve manufacturing processes for high-quality products, the company won ISO-9002 certification six years ago and last year upgraded to ISO-9001:2000. "Over the past several years we've been making all-out efforts to improve our production processes and enhance our quality-control procedures in accordance with ISO standards," Lu comments. "To keep production costs down, we focus on cutting materials loss, heightening production efficiency, and reducing product defects."

At the time of its 1988 transformation Chueng Shine concentrated on the Japanese market, and today still ships half of its output there, with the rest going to Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and Africa. "Japan is a critical market that demands high-quality products, and our concentration on that market proves that our quality is reliable," Lu says.

In pursuit of its focus on high-quality products, the company has invested in sophisticated testing equipment in addition to automated production equipment. It currently has four welding robots, six computerized numerically controlled (CNC) pipe-bending machines, 30 pressing machines, and equipment for testing torque, loading, durability, strength, and pressure.

Because of his firm's concentration on high-quality innovative OA chairs, the president insists that it does not need to follow some of its rivals in relocating production facilities to mainland China. "Taiwan is an ideal place for the production of high-quality OA furniture," he explains, "because of the island's large supply of intelligent R&D technicians who can 'drain their brains' in developing innovations. Besides that, I feel a responsibility to take care of the people living in Taiwan, because most of the profits we made in past years were contributed by our workers here."

This attitude helped Lu get elected president of District 3470 of the International Rotary Club Taiwan, which covers Yunlin, Chiayi, and Tainan counties in the southern part of the island.



No Need to Move



"Only those producers who stick to mass production have to consider moving to lower-cost areas," Lu goes on. "Our customers are based in countries featuring various stages of economic development, and we have to design different products with different styles to fit their specific needs. We've never stopped developing innovative products; we focus on small-quantity, large-variety production, and so we don't need to relocate our production."

Four R&D specialists are in charge of developing innovative products to fill specific requirements for Chueng Shine's customers. The firm's R&D spending, Lu reports, amounts to over NT$10 million (US$295,000 at NT$34.1:US$1) per year.

Lu claims that his company can develop innovative OA chairs faster than his rivals. "We've accumulated a lot of experience in developing special mechanisms and innovative products," he explains. "I know there are many copycats in the developing countries, because they don't spend even a penny to develop their own products. But I'm not afraid of them, because we can introduce new products any time we need to replace copied ones. Besides that, the quality of the copied products is much lower than ours; what they can copy from us is only the styling and appearance, but not the technology-oriented mechanisms that enhance the functions of the products."

Chueng Shine has won numerous patents in Japan, the U.S., and Europe for its mechanisms. Most of its products are made to its own designs, with only 15% being turned out on an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) basis. The own-brand products are more profitable, because they can be sold to more than a single customer.

In March, for instance, the company introduced a new series of executive chairs dubbed the CH-998ASX, designed also to meet the needs of SOHO (small office, home office) workers. The company says that this new chair, which took eight months to develop, features a patented adjustable back, seat, and arm, together with a fancy five-claw leg with electroplated castors.

For four years, Chueng Shine has been participating in major international furniture shows on Cologne, Chicago, Dubai, and Kuala Lumpur, and claims to have landed new customers at every one. For the remainder of 2004 it will take part in shows in Dubai in September and Cologne in October; in addition, it is working hard to develop the U.S.