Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): IIE(HK) 34th AGM cum Annual Dinner

2014年9月27日星期六

IIE(HK) 34th AGM cum Annual Dinner

The Institute of Industrial Engineers (Hong Kong) 34th Annual General Meeting cum Annual Dinner was held on 26 Sep 2014 in World Trade Center Club. The theme of the Annual Dinner was “IE in Service Industry”. I was honor to be invited as one of distinguished guests to attend this dinner. Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) had always supported IIE events (See reference). Tonight, Prof. Fugee Tsung, Dr. Aaron Tong and I had participated in the annual dinner.

In the beginning, Dr. Gary Tsui (President, IIE(HK)) gave a welcome speech and appreciated all members support IIE activities. Moreover, he presented a souvenir to Immediately Past President Mr. Larry Li for appreciating his hardworking to lead IIE(HK).

Ir. Dr. Hon Lo Wai Kwok, BBS, MH, JP (Fellow of HKIE) was the first Guest of Honour and his presentation entitled “Improving Hong Kong’s Competitive Edge through Industrial Engineering”. Firstly, he briefed the Budget 2014-15 with competitiveness and its main theme was “Diversified Economic Development”. The he discussed some statistics and prediction of Hong Kong Economic growth. The projection showed the growth to be flat at 2.5% (annual rate of change) after 2025. Labour force would be decline after 2018.

Then Ir. Dr. Lo discussed Hong Kong’s competitive edge. He quoted Thomas H. Davenport & James E. Short (MIT Sloan, Management Review 1990) statement that “We believe that the Industrial Engineers of the future, regardless of their formal title or the organizational unit that employs them, will focus increasingly on IT-enabled redesign of business processes.” Ir. Dr. Lo also said the trends in the 21st Century were the convergence of “Hardwares and Softwares”, “Physical Goods and Information” and “Reality and Virtual World”. Then he mentioned Internet of Things (IoT) and its application in Hong Kong.

Finally, Ir. Dr. Lo concluded the role of IE in the new era that “IE will take the lead in applying IT in process modeling, production scheduling and control, materials management, information systems, logistics, etc., basically in all modern service industries.

We took a photo with Ir. Dr. Lo in the guest table after this speech

During this break, we enjoyed students music performance.

Then the second Guest of Honour was Prof. Kailash C. Kapur (Visiting Professor, IELM Dept., HKUST) and his talk named “Industrial Engineering & Principled-Centered Service Quality”. Prof. Kapur briefed his work named 3R’S meant Reliability, Robustness, Resilience and Safety. Then he would like to talk about the evolution of IE with changes in service economy and Ten Quality Principles.

Prof. Kapur mentioned Hong Kong Service sector that Hong Kong exported US$137.1 billion worth of services, bearing a ratio of 50% to GDP in 2013. He introduced 5I’s of Service included Intangibility, Inventory (Perishability), Inseparability, Inconsistency (Variability) and Involvement. Then he introduced one very interested concept named “iBOYFRIEND” that interpreted as “It is a boyfriend who knows my needs before I know that I have them.”

After that Prof.Kapur stated 10 Principle-Centered Service Quality included ‘System Focus’, ‘Customer Focus’, ‘Process Focus’, ‘Hierarchical Structure’, ‘Future Focus’, ‘Continuous Improvement’, ‘Prevention…Proactive…Strategic Planning’, ‘Scientific Approach’, ‘Integration and Synthesis’ and ‘Understanding the Transformation’. Finally, he concluded IE to be iENGINEERING (iE) that “i” indicating information, integration, intuition, innovation, involvement, improvement…impossible to possible and so on.

Then we took a group photo with all guests to toast for celebrating the success of IIE(HK) Annual Dinner.

The final event was lucky draw. I was invited to draw the winner and the first winner was Mr. MK Lam (we called him LAM Sir).

Dr. Aaron Tong was also invited for lucky draw and the winner was HKU student.

Ir. Louis Ching (Deputy Chairman, MIE of HKIE) was invited to draw the prize.

Then Prof. KB Chan (Chairman, SMT) was invited to draw another prize.

Dr. SH Choi (Associate Head of IMSE Dept., HKU) was the winner for coffee machine.

Dr. Catherine Chan (President, HKQFDA) was very lucky to be drawn a big prize which was a wifi printer.

Many good friends I met during this dinner and took some photos for memory.

(Left: Dr. Sammy Wan (Past President of IIE), Ir. Richard Tse (Past Chairman of HKIE – MIE), I and Prof. Gregg Li (CEO, Gregg Li and Co; Vice Chairman of Business and Professionals Federation of Hong Kong))

(Left: Prof. KB Chan, I and Dr. Catherine Chan)

We learnt much from Prof. Chan. He said “Quality is Customer Perception” and the most important thing in the company was to remove your staff’s fear.

(Left: Mr. Coleman Tse (Sales & Marketing Director, BSI), Dr. Victor Lo (Vice Chairman - ISIHK), Dr. Frankie Law (PT Lecturer, Business School, HKU), Dr. Alan Chan (Associate Professor, SEEM Dept. of CityU) and I)

(Left: I, Mr. Harry Li (Immediately Past President of IIE(HK)), Ir. Dr. Hon Lo Wai Kwok, and Prof. Fugee Tsung (Professor and Head of IELM Dept, HKUST))