Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): HKSQ Technical Visit to Towngas

2014年4月25日星期五

HKSQ Technical Visit to Towngas - Quality & Innovation

HKSQ organzied a technical visit to Towngas North Point Headquarters on 25 April 2014 and ASQ-HK was co-organizer. The Headquarter building photo was shown below.

We were waiting in front of the main entry of Towngas.

Beginning, Mr. Peter Fung (Vice Chairman, HKSQ) briefed that this visit was continuous activities after HKSQ Seminar on Innovative Total Quality Improvement in Dec 2013 (See reference).

Before visit, Ms. Noel Lau (Project Officer, Continuing Transformation Office, Towngas Engineering Academy) gave an introduction video and speech to us. Her presentation focused on Quality Service Culture.

Ms. Lau said their corporate culture was in Traditional Thinking of Public Utility in 1862, but they had changed to Market-oriented, Customer-focused and Competitive culture since 1997. The following diagram explained how they defined "Customer-Focused". The first circle was customer tangible elements and the next two circles were customer intangible elements. Moreover, their Customer Value defined as:
Customer Value = (Quality x Service) / (Waiting Time x Cost).

Then she mentioned Towngas Mission below:
- To provide our customers with a safe, reliable supply of energy and the caring, competent and efficient service they expect, while working to preserve, protect and improve our environment.
The dynamic movement of Towngas was shown as following diagram. From regular cubic to cylinder (moving to one direction) and then to sphere (moving to multi-direction).

Superior Quality Service (SQS) formed in 1992 based on TQM approach and Continuing Transformation (CT) Office established in 1996 based on Business Re-engineering. They would like to upgrade their quality level and asked "What is next?"

They surveyed with their staff and got two main elements they needed. One was Innovation Tools and the other was an Atmosphere of learning together with Innovation. Then they employed Dr. Victor Lo's Innovation Model and modified to PKI2. Some examples of new tools were Ideality, Resources Utilitzation, 9-window, Random Word, Ideal Final Result, 5 Whys, etc. The atmosphere named Dream Zone that we would visit at the end.

Then we visited the Company's Grid Control Room. They monitored the towngas ducts pressure for leakage and forecasted the daily usage for production plan. If any failure reported, their staff would reach the location within 30min. Their GIS system could be used in web-based and their engineer could get the real time information on-site.

We also visited the Customer Service Hotline Centre. Both Control Room and Hotline Centre were operated 24x7x365. All customer officers used "biliterate and trilingual" (兩文三語). The centre had a policy to use human reception first and then machine reception system (先人後機). One of their quality objectives was 90% of waiting time within 1 min.