A Brief History of Scan

Scan Automation Technology was founded in 1981 by Mr. Ching-Long Lee, and his wife Mrs. Kitty Lee in Tainan, Taiwan. During the early days of its establishment, Scan served as a distributor of automation supplies in Taiwan. Due to Mr. Lee's technical knowledge and passion for automation-related technology, Scan began producing digital counters in 1982, and then proximity switches in 1983, becoming one of the early manufacturers of both products in Taiwan. Photoelectric sensors were released in 1994 after Scan began operations Ayutthaya, Thailand.

Above: Scan’s office building in Ayutthaya, Thailand. Lower left: Mr. Lee(middle) in his Ayutthaya office. Lower right: Scan products from early 1990s. Images obtained from the 1992 Scan catalog.

Fast forward to the present, and in addition to Scan's original Tainan operations which is now our customer service office, the ISO-certified engineering and manufacturing facility in Shenzhen China now design and manufacture a wide variety of products such as connector cables and boxes, pressure sensors, in addition to modern iterations of our original offerings. The vast majority of our current products are UL/CSA, and CCC certified, RoHS compliant, and built and tested to work in the toughest, most demanding environments where reliability is paramount. Scan uses only quality components from responsible sources and suppliers, and our products are currently being applied globally in domains such as automobile manufacturing, mining, food processing, and semiconductor fabrication. Our latest products include high performance laser and BGS photoelectric sensors; weld-field immune, and extreme temperature proximity switches rated to over 200 degrees Celsius.

Above: Scan’s current site in Shenzhen, China. First began operation in 1996. It currently contains two engineering and production facilities, an employee dormitory, and an employee cafeteria. One interesting fact: the site has over 230 organic tropical fruit trees open to the enjoyment of all our employees.

Also true to Scan's family business roots, the second generation of the Lee family, Dr. Mike Lee, has also joined Scan looking to lead Scan into the future. Scan will continue to operate by our mission mantra: Honest friendly people, reliable modern sensors.