KMB Bus Service and Fleet Management

My wife and I attended a seminar entitled “Secrets of KMB’s Exemplary Bus Service and Fleet Management” and then visited Lai Chi Kok Depot on 27 Feb 2009.

In the beginning, KMB introduction video was shown. Then Mr. K.Y. Ng (Sr. Manager, Maintenance Adm) introduced quality and environmental management system in KMB. KMB is the only public bus company in Hong Kong with ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certification which are certified by HKQAA.

The history of certification is given as follows:
In 1999, ISO 9001:1994 certification was certified in the following department: KMB Headquarters, Traffic Department and All Maintenance Depots.
In 2002, ISO 9001:2000 certification was certified in the following department: KMB Headquarters, Traffic Department, Four Permanent Operating Depots, Overhaul Centre, Bus Body Construction Depot and Tuen Mun 80 Unit Overhaul Depot.
In 2001 and 2003, Sha Tin Depot and Lai Chi Kok Depot achieved ISO 14001 certification respectively.

Moreover, KMB has been awarded Hong Kong Green Mark Certification by the Hong Kong Q-Mark Council of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries.

Mr. Ng mentioned that there is no quality department in KMB and all staff takes part-time role to contribute in quality management. For ISO execution, a comprehensive “Staff Handbook” and quality standard booklet (in Chinese) were used to communicate with more than 8000 bus captains. Then Miss Lam explained about customer service. KMB employed Customer Feedback Management System and also performed Passenger Satisfaction Survey.

Dr. Albert Tsang (Chairman of HKSQ) presented souvenir to Miss Lam.

After the seminar, KMB arranged a bus to take us to visit Lai Chi Kok Depot.

After daily services, buses will come back to depot. The first step is to download Octopus info and collect coins. The second step is refueling the bus fully by using the “Posilock” fuel filling system (which used on aircraft). The fill rate is 150L/min and each bus (fill tank capacity ~450L) will take not longer than 3 min to complete refueling. After that, bus will be cleaned by an automatic system for one minute. They have a service commitment to captains that the overall process will be within 5 min.

The Depot has 3 floors, namely Level 1, Level 3 and Level 5. Where are Level 2 and Level 4 missing? They are the upper deck of a double-deck bus when it is in Level 1 and 3.

Finally, we took a group photo in Level 5.

Supplier Quality Assurance Management

I attended a seminar entitled “A Critical Rethink of Supplier Quality Assurance Management of Hardware Manufacturing” which was organized by Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) and Institute of Supply Management Hong Kong (ISMHK) on 26 Feb 2009. The speaker was Mr. Daniel Chan who is the Chairman of IBM Global PCB Council and shared his 20 years procurement experience.


In the beginning, Mr. Chan introduced that IBM value sequence is QCD (Quality, Cost and Delivery) but that of many US companies is CDQ. He also introduced a holistic view of “Good Quality”. There are:
i) User Interface Level (Technology, Reliability, Sustainability, etc.)
ii) User Education Level (Corp. Image, Customer Service, etc.)
iii) International Standardization / Reference (ISO 9001, UL, Intel CPU, country of origin, etc.)

After that, he discussed the product QA program included:
i) Product concept/marketing segment (e.g. positioning)
ii) Industrial design and concept
a) Design for manufacturability
b) Design for quality assurance

Overall View of Supplier Quality Assurance focused on:
i) Early prototype hardware
ii) Manufacturing
iii) Client quality feedback process, very critical process
iv) TQM (Top management responsibility)

He argued when it was NDF (No detect found), did it indicate the system was ok? No CAR, No action required? No quality problem? It may because of shift of components mean to upper or lower level of the specification. Then he mentioned 3D SPC in which time is considered, as the third axis (SPC should be feed forward (real time data) rather than feed backward system.).
“Inspection is NOT BAD!” was an interesting point realized. Many American quality gurus believed that inspection can be eliminated and only quality management system is focused. Speaker’s experience told us inspection is necessary. Inspection skill and filtration of defect parts are very critical in quality assurance program. It is because manufacturing process which is not perfect needs a good quality control program with inspection.

Then he pointed out something to learn from Japanese QA program including Lean Manufacturing, Good Relationship with Customer, and Sustainability.

Finally, he concluded that “The supplier quality assurance program is a joint quality assurance team effort between the procurement and supplier with the strong senior management commitment, effort and involvement to create a high quality awareness and operation environmental hygiene, and with the use of the appropriate professional quality tools correctly to achieve the overall quality satisfaction of the clients.”

HKSQ Chairman (Dr. Albert Tsang) presented souvenir to the speaker.

父親永別

感謝各親戚朋友這兩天到來送父親最後一程。大家相聚之際，懷念之餘，令場面非常熱鬧，相信父親亦對我們的安排滿意。

英雄宴席上，錦叔題：
紅顏遍處唯獨糟糠成知己；
益友繁多亦需三五作良朋。

昌叔笑問：是‘益友繁多’還是‘益友煩多’呢？

在此，再次感謝各親友的來臨及協助。

Engineering Asset Management

I joined a seminar entitled “Fail and Fix to Predict and Prevent – A Paradigm Shift in Engineering Asset Management” hosted by the Smart Engineering Asset Management Laboratory (SEAM) of CityU and co-organized by HKIE – MI, BSOMES, HKSQ, HKIUS, HKURC and UTI in the last Friday evening(20 Feb 2009). The following is the summary of the seminar.

In the beginning, Dr. Peter W. Tse (Director, Smart Engineering Asset Management (SEAM) Laboratory, MEEM Dept, CityU) introduced the SEAM Laboratory and its achievement.


Global SEAM Consortium was formed for international cooperation and some achievements were shown as follows:
- The Research in pipeline integrity monitoring was awarded the National Science Foundation of China Fund.
- SEAM had developed an automatic fault detection and fuel saving system for power GENERATORS which funded by industries.
- Developed an on-road TRUCK’s instantaneous safety evaluation system through mobile/GPS based remote advisory and fleet management which supported by a state enterprise.



The speaker, Prof. Andy Koronios, who is the Head of the School of Computer & Information Science, Division of IT, Engineering & the Environment at University of South Australia. He has established two University Research Laboratories and a funded centre. He is currently the Research Program Leader of a federally funded centre for system integration in engineer asset management and has attracted more than $11M in research funding.


Firstly, Prof Koronios introduced Engineering Asset Management (EAM). Asset is divided into tangible and intangible. Integrated AM included acquisition, use, care, refurbishment, and/or disposal … divestment.

He said management don’t know where the assets are? What the asset’s condition? He questioned “Are you managing your risk?” Then he introduced EAM Frame-work and key stakeholders.

ICT as an enabler for EAM was discussed. The evolution chart for using ICT to increase capability in EAM was shown. ICT was used delivering the right Information to the right people at the right time.

The future is remote the rise of machines. The communication problem should be reduced.

Then he introduced CIEAM Research Program in which Collaboration Research Centre in EAM was under Gov-Industry-University Collaboration. (http://www.cieam.com/).

CIEAM Maturity Model was introduced.

Finally, Governance and standards was mentioned, especially PAS 55 and ISO 15926.

PAS 55 – "Asset management" is a Publicly Available Specification published by the British Standards Institution.
The standard is divided into two parts:
Part 1 - Specification for the optimized management of physical infrastructure assets
Part 2 - Guidelines for the application of PAS 55-1

ISO 15926 - "Industrial automation systems and integration — Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas production facilities" is a standard for data integration, sharing, exchange, and hand-over between computer systems.

Dr. Winco Yung (Chairman of HKIE – MI division) presented souvenir.

Dr. Albert Tsang (Chairman of HKSQ) presented souvenir.

Group photo taken

PCB and Packaging Technologies

I attended a seminar titled “PCB and Packaging Technologies” which was organized by the Physical Society of Hong Kong and co-organized by HKPC on 20 Feb 2009. The seminar aimed to enhance knowledge of engineers in the electronics industry on emerging technology discoveries and exploit these technologies in the development of new materials, components, and products. I would like to share some contents of the seminar as below.

Firstly, Professor Kam-Sing WONG (President, Physical Society of Hong Kong) presented welcome message to us.


The first speaker was Mr. Daniel CHAN (Global PCB Council Chairman, IBM Hong Kong Limited). His topic for keynote speech was “PCB and Packaging Industry Trend-Opportunity and Challenge in 2009”.

Mr. Chan introduced the global economic outlook that 2009 is a year of challenge and global economy would be gradual recovery in 2010 and beyond. Then he pointed out some opportunities in Pearl River Delta at GuangDong:
- Transformed to a modern intelligent based 1 billion population economic system
- Knowledge based society particularly Hong Kong
- Highly competitive in globalization process

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) value curve has became more important. PCB and Electronics Industry’s “3D” Approach was shown:
i) DEEPER Client Relationships
ii) DIFFERENTIATED Solutions
iii) Global DELIVERY

Finally, he summarized the topic by using the sentence “The Electronics Industry is looking for your expertise in building innovative, end-to-end, competitive, sustainable, and high quality solutions. Your success is critical for creating greater value for both tangible and intangible business results in the Industry.”

The second speaker was Prof. Philip CHAN (Dean of Engineer, Director of Center for Advanced Microsystems Packaging, HKUST) and topic presented “Electronic Packaging for Solid-State Lighting”. Before starting the presentation, Prof. CHAN demonstrated the LED panel which was 60 Lumen/Watt and 2006 technology. (Because the LED lighting was very bright, Prof. CHAN needed to wear protective goggle.)

He showed the development history of white LED and its application to us.

Then he explained their MTR project which had started since 2006. During Q&A, one of participant asked why the LED light of MTR was observed grid shape. Prof. CHAN explained that if a filter is added to make it smoother, passengers will not know we are using LED. (Interesting!)

After that he introduced the LED manufacturing process and some electronic packaging issues such as Thermal management, Epoxy and silicon encapsulation, Integration of phosphor, Integration of optics and Integration of lighting system.


Dr. Ivan SHAM (Manager, ASTRI) was the third speaker and his presentation entitled “Flip Chip and Wafer-Level Chip Scale Packaging: Market Updates, Key Processes and Application Examples”. He introduced Flip Chip (FC) packaging market and key processes. Wafer-Level Chip-Scale Packaging (WL-CSP) was also discussed.

What is WL-CSP?
· Semiconductor packaging in which the majority of the packaging and testing is accomplished in whole-wafer form.
· The device must have:
- Redistribution layer (RDL) for electrical redistribution
- Interconnect between chip and board
- Environmental/mechanical protection

Finally, speaker summarized that the futures of FC would be primarily related to high pin counts, high performance applications while WL-CSP would be more suitable for low pin counts, low-cost applications.

The 4th speaker was Dr. Daniel SHI (Director, ASTRI) and his topic entitled “3D Intergration – A Solution for Next Generation Silicon Devices”.

He explained the 3D packaging was heterogeneous integrated such as RF, memory, logic, MEMS, imagers, etc. Through Silicon Via (TSV) Based 3D packaging was shown.

Lastly, he summarized the 3D integration was another major solution to increase IC density and functionality and 3D packaging/integration technology was believed to have many applications including consumer electronics, wireless communication, bio-medical devices, aerospace, automotive, etc.


Mr. Tetsuya OHISHI (Consultant, Grand Joint Technology Ltd.) was the 5th speaker and presented “Embedded Component Trend & Applications”. He introduced companies and technology about embedded process / assembly in Japan.

He introduced some project in Hong Kong.

He introduced the related conference in Japan.

Mr. Jun WU (Sr. Application Engineer, Cadence Design System, Inc.) was the 6th speaker and his topic was “Advanced IC Package/SiP and PCB Co-Design solution”. He took the design challenges:
- High-level system integration on silicon driving pin count over 1000 pins
- High speed digital I/O’s
- Minimizing package cost

Then Mr. WU introduced Package and PCB co-design with SCM.

Then Mr. WU introduced Package and PCB co-design with SCM.

“Flow by Functions” was introduced:
i) System Conectivity
ii) VSIC Model
iii) IO Floorplan
iv) SiP Substrate Floor Plan
v) Electrical Verification
vi) Substrate Routing

At the end, he demonstrated the Storyboard.

The 7th speaker was Prof. Winco YUNG (Asso Prof, ISE Dept., PolyU) and his presentation entitled “Green PCB and Substrate for Sustainability”.

Firstly, he introduced environmental policy in Europe (e.g. REACH timeline) and in China.

Then he discussed environmental research for Green PCB Material as follows:
i) Elimination of Halogenated Flame Retardants
ii) Reduction of Toxic Solvents
iii) Renewable Resin for PCBs

Finally, he concluded:
i) It is inevitable that the transition to environmental compliance will have a significant impact on the business landscape in PCB and electronic industries.
ii) Capability & Timeliness to comply with RoHS, WEEE, REACH and China environmental regulations now become key competitive differentiators in the industry.


The 8th speaker was Miss Tarja RAPALA (CTO, Meadville Group) and her topic was “HDI PCBs application of Mobile devices: Trends and opportunities”.

She introduced mobile device and technology development. Then she discussed the driver for PCB technologies in mobile devices including:
- Product segment and type (Low-, mid-, high end device)
- Component packaging technologies

Finally, she reviewed that component I/O count increase and continuous pressure on miniaturization are driving PCB technology selection in mid-/high-end mobile devices; but in low-end products were driven by cost and availability.


Mr. Daniel CHAN (Global PCB Council Chairman, IBM Hong Kong Limited) gave the 9th speech and presented “Global Computer Server Infra-Structure – PCB Challenge and Opportunity in 2009”.

He presented PCB technology trend for processing power demanding server as follows:
- Higher layer count
- Larger form factor
- Signal integrity challenge
- Environmental sustainability
- High reliability requirement

Then he showed different series product which are made by using optical fiber.

Lastly, he gave the key message “The server supply market is looking for overall competitive end to end PCB solutions in both commercial and technical perspective to create an unmatchable value in both tangible and intangible perspective to our client business success.”


Dr. Lifu YOU (China Technical Marketing Manager, System Design Division, Mentor Graphics) was the 10th speaker who presented “PCB Design Collaboration – Enabling Design with Distributed, Multi-disciplined Teams”.

He introduced “XtremePCB” design tools which were able to provide multi-designer simultaneous layout. One of their client commented the use of XtremePCB reduced the design cycle time from 13 weeks to 5 weeks.

He used cell phone as one of examples.

The 11th speaker was Mr. P.C. LEUNG (Director, Year 2000 Ltd) and his topic was “Welding Technology Used in Repair”.

Mr. LEUNG introduced his welding machine (PW-06: precision weld version 6) and its theory.

He also showed several success cases including super mini motor, mobile phone speaker, chip components (~2mm size), PCBA repair (0.3mm pitch), etc.

He concluded that engineering / R&D departments could adopt welding machine as an essential tool, along side power supplies, soldering irons, and screwdrivers.


By the end of seminar, Mr. Raymond CHIU (Principal Consultant, Automotive and Electronics Division, HKPC) introduced PCB laboratories in HKPC and led plant tour for HKPC reliability and EMC laboratories.