30 years ago, Wang Wuxiong, the chairman of CHMER, who originally worked at Panasonic, had the opportunity to visit a friend's nearby metalworking factory. He successfully repaired an EDM machine that had been idle for over a year, a machine that even Japanese technicians couldn't fix. Surprisingly, with his exceptional technical skills, Wang Wuxiong replaced a resistor costing only 5 NT dollars, bringing the machine back to operation. This incident marked the beginning of Wang Wuxiong's entry into the field of electrical discharge machining.

During the development of machinery, Wang Wuxiong, driven by his commitment to research and development, once burned down the top floor of a rented house during an experiment. Despite facing financial losses, his persistence in R&D led CHMER to complete the first domestically produced "Full-Crystal Electric" EDM machine in 1964. CHMER has consistently been a frontrunner in product development in the domestic EDM industry. Currently, one-third of the 50 EDM machine manufacturers in Taiwan originated from CHMER, making it the cradle of Taiwan's EDM industry.

In the 30 years since founding CHMER, Wang Wuxiong encourages innovation and continuous R&D investment, with an annual budget of around tens of millions for research and development. His expectation for the R&D department is to develop one new machine every two years to participate in the Taipei Machine Tool Exhibition.

Despite the two-year deadline for the R&D department and Wang Wuxiong's own R&D capabilities, he allows sufficient space for the creative expression of the R&D team. Even if a new research project has been underway for one or one and a half years without visible results, Wang Wuxiong remains patient until after the one-and-a-half-year mark before intervening to assist.

Innovation in R&D as the Core Competence

In fact, with 30 years of experience in the EDM industry, Wang Wuxiong shares a common language with the R&D department, enabling effective collaboration. Besides, CHMER's core competence lies in continuous innovation, coupled with a record of no employee turnover for 13 consecutive years, ensuring the continuity of CHMER's experience transfer and key stable operations. In the past 16 to 17 years, talent loss at CHMER was a severe issue, with many new EDM machine manufacturers founded by former CHMER personnel. Faced with this problem, Wang Wuxiong sought advice from the president of a Swiss machinery company, who suggested expanding the workforce, adding management positions, and fairly sharing profits with employees, while ensuring that employees fully understood the company's operations.

Profit Center System - Employees Decide Bonuses

Following this advice, Wang Wuxiong encourages senior executives interested in entrepreneurship to establish internal ventures. They can form joint ventures with CHMER, making these ventures CHMER's affiliate companies. This approach allows CHMER to continue benefiting from the talents it has nurtured in a different capacity. Moreover, CHMER has adopted the profit center system for the past 15 years, openly disclosing the company's operational status and allowing each department to independently calculate profits and bonuses. Therefore, Wang Wuxiong often emphasizes that CHMER employees' bonuses are not determined by him. Under the profit center system, employees are more motivated and excel in self-management.

Currently, CHMER is the largest EDM machine manufacturer in Taiwan, achieved through three main strategies:

1. Investment in controller development, overcoming two failures to successfully develop the PC-Based controller, breaking Japan's monopoly on the Taiwan wire-cutting machine market.

2. Unlike competitors adopting OEM strategies, CHMER markets its products under its own brand in over 50 countries. Once the brand image is established, sales in Europe, America, and Asia gain customer recognition.

Prosperity Earns Money, Adversity Earns Trust

3. Key components are self-made by CHMER or affiliate companies, resulting in a high self-production rate. During the peak of the machine tool industry, when others often face the dilemma of "work stoppage and waiting for materials," CHMER rarely encounters such issues, gaining a competitive edge in the market.

Looking ahead, CHMER's strategy involves continuous innovation, investment in new product development, and focusing on the largest market in Asia—Mainland China. CHMER recognizes that traditional EDM machines may face price wars with Taiwanese competitors in the Chinese market. Therefore, CHMER will emphasize marketing CNC EDM machines and wire-cutting machines, which have a competitive advantage in terms of quality and innovation.

For slower-recovering markets in Europe and the United States, Wang Wuxiong adopts a lesson learned during his tenure at Panasonic: "In good times, you earn the customer's money, and in tough times, you earn their trust." Consequently, he will request the company's service engineers to arrange overseas tours to assure European and American customers of CHMER's commitment to service quality.

[Oral/Wang Wuxiong Writing/Zhang Linghui]
Source: May 20, 2005, Business Times