In 2022, the Zhen Ding invested approximately NT$8.3 billion in research and development, a significant increase of 14% compared to 2021, accounting for approximately 5% of its revenue in 2022. As of December 2022, there were 6,159 employees working in R&D, accounting for 15% of the total number of employees, an increase of 8% compared to 5,722 R&D employees at the end of 2021.

Zhen Ding focuses on R&D deployment and commits long-term resources to develop new products, processes, technologies, materials, and equipment. It actively collaborates with strategic partners to build a core R&D ecosystem, engaging external resources such as industry-academia-research collaborations, customers, and suppliers. Through this three-party collaboration, novel and universal technologies are developed. Additionally, Zhen Ding strategically protects intellectual property rights by patenting innovative, low-carbon, and de-carbonization technologies and products. The newly developed applications and functionalities are introduced into customers' new products, thus exploring new market opportunities for customers.

Core R&D Ecosystem Chain

"Leading Industry Technologies and Exceeding Customer Expectations" has always been the vision of Zhen Ding's technology research and development. The company has set up a Business Strategy Committee at the management level to regularly plan the long-term strategy and direction of the company, and set up a R&D center for forward-looking technological development. Following the three key R&D strategic principles of "meeting customer needs," "exceeding customer expectations," and "leading the industry with innovative technology," we leverage the Company's short-term, medium-term, and long-term innovation capabilities to enhance product technology platforms and strengthen the industry chain for mutual success. We strive to provide customers with the best and diverse range of R&D projects, transforming advanced technology into commercially valuable products and creating more growth opportunities for the company.

Innovative Technology Sharing Platforms

The "Technology Platform" aims to provide customers with comprehensive services through the "One ZDT" solution. It offers end-to-end services ranging from collaboration with customers and suppliers, product and technology development, stack design, simulation and testing, to product reliability verification. In order to expand the depth and breadth of technology development, external resources are leveraged and integrated with internal resources to enhance the technological core of this platform. External resources, such as those from the industry, academia, and research, are utilized to build process principles and cultivate skilled talents, reducing the gap between theory and application and effectively introducing advanced technologies into industries. Collaboration with equipment and material suppliers is also conducted to jointly develop specific technologies and materials required for customer products. Internally, optimization of product development is achieved through design and simulation methods, providing product solutions. In 2022, the R&D department conducted 259 cases of signal integrity simulation and optimization through the "High-Speed, High-Frequency Platform," representing a growth of approximately 21.6% compared to the previous year, the development process involved optimizing product designs to minimize experimental design plans, and development of in-house process technologies and product reliability and verification processes were integrated to provide key proprietary technologies that meet the individual product characteristics required by customers. Through the "Technology Platform" , there were 21 industry-academia-research collaboration projects in 2022, we collaborated with 16 universities , including National Tsing Hua University, Yuan Ze University, Feng Chia University, Shenzhen University, and Southeast University.

Comprehensive Technology Solutions

Zhen Ding possesses the capabilities of PCB product design, development, manufacturing, and sales. With our strong capabilities, we are able to provide comprehensive PCB products and services to different customers, which enables us to engage in advance layout planning
for next-generation products with our customers. Through the sharing of the "Technology Platforms" established by the Company, In 2022, we provided customized technical solutions to at least 20 customers, we promoted process integration, process refinement, yield improvement, and production cycle time reduction of different PCB products.
Since the establishment of this platform, there were over a total of over 74,391 successful engineering innovation improvement projects developed as of the end of 2022, covering five major areas: 30,043 new processes, 4,254 new technologies, 13,363 new materials, and 26,731 new equipment, with a total improvement cost of NT$9.1 billion, an increase of 78% compared to 2021.

Intellectual Property Management Plan

Zhen Ding has established and implemented relevant regulations, including the "Intellectual Property Rights Management Manual", the "Procedures for Intellectual Property Rights Application ", the "Third-party Intellectual Property Rights Policies and Investigation Procedures ", and the “Confidentiality Management System”. In 2022, 365 patent applications were filed and 247 patents were granted. As of December 31, 2022, the company owned 1,440 valid patents.