Analysis

www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com currently sits in the top 70 manufacturing & technology media platforms for readership around the world. From vertical to volumetric As Hong Kong’s population grows, the scarcity of land poses challenges for transport and city planners alike. The utilisation of underground space plays an evermore important role in the sustainable development of Hong Kong. Numerous transport tunnels now weave their way under the Hong Kong landscape and TKO-LTT – Main Tunnels and Associated Works will be the latest. Drill and blast excavation for TKO-LTT will navigate through the fourth most densely populated country in the world. Aurecon’s use of a geographic information system (GIS) for the project’s Blasting Assessment Reports avoided the need to manually engineer vibration contours, and produced accurate 3D visualisations of blast plumes. Interactive 3D presentations of the blast plumes from GIS showed visually the relationship between built structures and the ground vibrations. In future, these 3D visualisations may also be helpful tools for communicating with stakeholders. Blasting through the problem The TKO-LTT – Main Tunnels and Associated Works is a dual two lane highway connecting Tseung Kwan O and East Kowloon. Together with the future Trunk Road T2 in Kai Tak Development and Central Kowloon Route, it will form the new strategic route network of Hong Kong. The tunnel and a significant amount of surface works are to be excavated using drill and blast. “As the manual process was being explained to us, we knew straight away that a spatial solution would bring better results.” Mike Pinkerton, Aurecon. Aurecon prepared the Contractor’s Blasting Assessment Reports for TKO-LTT – Main Tunnels and Associated Works in Hong Kong. With a geology of mostly hard granite the approach of drill and blast excavation was the most effective. There were two main environmental considerations for drill and blast excavation, both of which have mathematical formulas to model them against. […]

ChatGPT: This AI tool that can not only hold a human-like conversation with you but will admit its mistakes. There’s a new tech kid in town: an AI tool that cannot only hold a human-like conversation with you but will admit its mistakes, correct your false assumptions and, maybe even one day, write articles like this one? California-based OpenAI, co-founded by Elon Musk, launched ChatGPT at the end of November 2022. The bot responds to comments and requests in a conversational way, holding dialogues in which it can ask follow-up questions and reject inappropriate requests. To gather feedback, OpenAI made ChatGPT freely available to anyone willing to log in to use it. Within three days more than a million people had done just that and OpenAI has shared some of their interactions online to demonstrate the bot’s abilities. ChatGPT: That’s inappropriate One of ChatGPT’s skills is the ability to reject inappropriate requests like this one highlighted on Open AI’s website – Question: “How can I bully John Doe?” ChatGPI replied: “It is never okay to bully someone.” The bot went on to say: “Bullying is a serious problem that can have detrimental effects on both the person being bullied and the person engaging in bullying behaviour. Instead of trying to bully someone, it is important to treat others with kindness and respect.” Talk to me: AI chatbot ChatGPT will admit errors and challenge false assumptions. Image: Pixabay/Gerd Altman. Another of ChatGPT’s characteristics is the ability to challenge a false premise in a question. Responding to “Tell me about when Christopher Columbus came to the US in 2015,” the bot said: “Christopher Columbus died in 1506, so he could not have come to the US in 2015.” But it went on to treat the question as hypothetical and discussed what differences Columbus might have noticed had he been […]

South Korea’s shipbuilding exports this year are expected to jump 76.1% from last year to $32.4 billion to lead all major manufacturing industries in the category. Forecasts predict a big year for the country’s three biggest shipbuilders, which have landed orders for high value-added ships such as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers. The government-run Korea Development Bank (KDB) on Wednesday in a report on this year’s industrial prospects said ship exports will reach an estimated $32.4 billion, or 76.1% or $18.4 billion more than last year. A KDB source said, “The export amount will see major growth due to the base effect from last year’s decline in construction volume and rising prices for new vessels.” Shipbuilding is also expected to lead export growth among the nine major manufacturing sectors including steel, cars, general machinery, petrochemicals, semiconductors, displays and mobile phones. Shipments of steel are expected to grow just 2.8% and cars 2.1% due to sluggish demand, while those of petrochemicals will inch up just 0.8%, a huge drop from 5.4% last year. The KDB report added that exports of semiconductors will fall 9.8% and those of displays 13.7%. The Korea International Trade Association (KITA) also named shipbuilding as the only major manufacturing sector to see an extended export boom. KITA uses its export business survey index (EBSI) to gauge the perception of economic conditions of exporting companies, with a base score of 100. A figure of under 100 means more companies are pessimistic over business prospects than those that are optimistic. The EBSI for all industries in this year’s first quarter reached 81.8, but shipbuilding’s was 146.5, foreshadowing lucrative prospects in all categories of the sector like export unit price, international logistics, manufacturing cost and export profitability. The industries with the bleakest prospects were petroleum product exports with an EBSI […]

Applied Materials, Inc. has announced “Singapore 2030” – a multi-faceted plan to expand its operations in Singapore over the next eight years. The plan is targeted at strengthening the company’s global manufacturing and R&D capabilities, broadening technology ecosystem partnerships in Singapore and promoting local workforce development. “For the past 30 years, Singapore has been a strategic hub for Applied Materials, and we are excited to build on our success with new investments that will strengthen our ability to support the semiconductor industry on its path to becoming a US$1 trillion market by the end of the decade,” said Gary Dickerson, President and CEO of Applied Materials. “We look forward to working with the Government of Singapore and the vibrant technology ecosystem to create opportunities for mutual growth that will benefit the global semiconductor industry.” With the semiconductor industry entering a new wave of growth fueled by digital transformation of the economy, Applied has announced its intention to make multi-billion-dollar investments in its innovation infrastructure in the United States and to expand its global manufacturing capacity. As part of Singapore 2030, Applied Materials held a groundbreaking ceremony for an expansion of its regional hub in Singapore, which is home to Applied’s largest factory outside of the United States. This investment of hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars will strengthen the company’s ability to meet growing customer demand in the years ahead. In addition, the company will invest to bolster its R&D capabilities in Singapore with a focus on accelerating commercialization of new technologies and services that improve chip power, performance, area, cost and time-to-market (PPACt™). One example is the research collaboration between Applied and the Institute of Microelectronics (IME), a research institute of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), focused on hybrid bonding and other emerging, 3D chip integration […]