ASQ InfVoices – Quality Life and Succession

The topic in June 2015 of ASQ Influential Voices was written by Sunil Kaushik who shared his travel experience using lean & 5S. His article named “How Lean Helped Me Travel To Egypt With Just $500”. Mr. Sunil Kaushik demonstrated how employed Quality Principle in our life and he got effective and efficiency results. However, I observed many gurus were able to apply quality principle they believed in their life and then influent to their family, friends and others. Therefore, I would like to discuss quality life of quality professionals and their succession.

The first one I would like to discuss was Prof. Liu Yuanzhang (1925-2014) who is the father of Quality Management in China. HKSQ met Prof. Liu during ANQ Congress 2011 in Vietnam.

Recently, I received his daughter (Ms. Liu Ming, (Mindy Fukushi)) email and she sent me an essay on her father for memory. She had influenced by Prof. Liu and became Quality Professional too. I would like to summarize some points of the article to show how Prof. Liu influent Ms. Liu Ming:
i) Don’t complaint the fact (e.g. old factory problem)! You need to accept the fact objectively and face it.
ii) Good Quality Professionals should have high standard on themselves.
iii) When Ms. Liu Ming was 12 years old, Prof. Liu handmade a very delicate small balance. At the time, Ms. Liu Ming understood how to appreciate the taste or standard of things.
iv) When she was a child, Prof. Liu blamed her about the mistake on “cm” and “m” seriously.
v) Prof. Liu had told her that people needed to observe others need (Customer Requirements / Needs) and also focused on effective.
vi) Prof. Liu’s enthusiasm and passion on TQM burn into his daughter’s mind.

The second one was Mr. Bill Hunter (One of authors on the book named “Statistics for Experimenters - Second Edition”) (1937-1986) and worked with Deming before. Bill Hunter was a consultant, educator for practitioners, communicator, and integrator of statistical thinking into other disciplines. Now, his son Mr. John Hunter become Quality Professional and one of 12 people worldwide selected by the W. Edwards Deming Institute to reconfigure Dr. Deming’s famous “Four Day Seminar” into the 2.5 day seminar “Out of the Crisis”. After read John’s blog, I observed that he visited many factories with his father when he was a child.
(Photo: We met on 15 Jun 2014 when John taught a course for HKQAA in Hong Kong.)

The third succession case was Mr. Gregory Watson (Past President of International Academy for Quality (IAQ)) and his son Mr. Andrew Watson. Mr. Gregory Watson is a leading global voice on quality and his son is an artist and educator. They wrote an article named “The Future of Customer Experience (CEx): CEx Becomes the Dominant Design Force Influencing Markets” in the ASQ 2015 Future of Quality Report.

(Photo: We met in ASQ WCQI Chairman Session in 2011)
 

Mr. Andrew Watson was one of keynote speakers in ANQ Congress 2015 and his topic named “The Role of Artistic Thinking as an Innovation Stimulus to Increase Quality” (http://www.anq2015.org/?product_13.html).

Therefore, I could draw a conclusion that most quality gurus practice quality principle in themselves and their quality behavior would affect people around them including family members, friends, co-workers, partners, and others. 

Reference:
A View from the Q - http://asq.org/blog/
20140406: Remember Academician Liu Yuanzhang (劉源張) - Father of Quality Management in China - http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2014/04/remember-academician-liu-yuanzhang.html
20140615: HKSQ Dinner with John Hunter (Deming Institute) - http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2014/06/hksq-dinner-with-john-hunter.html
20110518: ASQ World Conference - World Partner Workshop - http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2011/05/asq-world-conference-world-partner.html
John Hunter (2015) “The Aim Should be the Best Life – Not Work v. Life Balance” and (2013) “George Box”

ASTRI visit to HKSTP Technology Support Centre for ISO 27001 experience sharing

I was honor to share our experience on ISO 27001 implemented in Technology Support Centre in HKSTP in which was the first laboratory certified ISO 27001 in Hong Kong.  ASTRI team visited us on 30 Jun 2015 morning.  The following photo is our ISO 27001 certificate with our service scopes.

Visitor of ASTRI Team as follows:

-          Chris Chen (IT Director)

-          Daeman Chan (IT Manager)

-          Jim Hui (Quality Manager)

-          Calvin Shum (Quality Engineer)

-          Winston Oey (Quality Engineer)

-          Astley Wan (Senior Manager, Facility)

The schedule showed below:

(10:30am – 11:00am)

i)                    Briefing the background and implementation issue.

(11:00am – 12:00pm)

ii)                  Visit to WCTL & RL

iii)                Visit to ICFAL & MAL

iv)                Visit to BSC

v)                  Visit to PDTC

Hopefully our experience could assist ASTRI certified ISO 27001 in near future.

Reference:

HKSTPC - http://www.hkstp.org/  

ASTRI - http://www.astri.org/main/

Related activities:

20150619: HKCTC & HKAS Workshop on ISO 27001 ISMS Certification - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2015/06/hkctc-hkas-workshop-on-iso-27001-isms.html

20150424: PMI Seminar on QMS based Information Security Management - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2015/04/pmi-seminar-on-qms-based-information.html

20090827: Challenges on Information Security - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2009/08/challenges-of-information-security.html

20080802: Seminar on ISO 9001:2000 UPGRADE to 2008 Version & Secure your information with ISO 27001 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2008/08/seminar-on-iso-90012000-upgrade-to-2008.html

HKSQ Seminar on Food Toxicity using Fish Embryos

The seminar entitled "Food Toxicity using Fish Embryos" was organized by Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) and co-organizer by America Society for Quality (ASQ) – Hong Kong on 26th Jun 2015. The seminar aimed to share Vitargent’s ground-breaking transgenic medaka and zebrafish Fish Embryo Toxicity (FET) test technologies has the capability to screen more than 1,000 toxins at one time. Moreover, Vitargent got the “Grand Prize of the 43rd International Exhibition of Inventions of GENEVA” to using a system for detecting toxins in April 2015. In the beginning, I (Former Chairman, HKSQ) introduced our guest speaker Dr. Xueping Chen who studied PhD in BCH Department, City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and then performed 3 years post-doc. After 6 years research in CityU, Dr. Xueping Chen and another CityU student formed Start-up named “Vitargent (Int’l) Biotechnology Ltd.” since April 2010 and located in Hong Kong Science and Technology Park.

Dr. Xueping Chen (CTO, Vitargent) introduced the history and service of her company first. They were first and only accredited ISO 17025 testing lab in Asia offering in vivo toxicity screening methods.

Then Dr. Chen explained why market needs because consumer very concerned about the impact of chemicals used in their products on their health. However, traditional chemical testing was not enough to cover all harmful materials/chemicals.

After that Dr. Chen briefed her technologies that “Zebrafish share 70% of genes with humans and 84% of genes known to be associated with human disease have a zebrafish counterpart” and proven could test over 1,000+ human toxin at once, as well as, widely used in pharmaceutics industry.

The 1st patented transgenic Medaka Embryo test using 8 embryo per well and prepared test sample, negative control (e.g. water) and positive control (e.g. 1ppb, 3ppb, 5ppb, 8ppb, 10ppb) to form calibration curve. Moreover, their curve fitness R-sq was usually above 0.95. In their research, categories included Dairy products, Meat products, Drinks and Others.

Recently, cooking oil was concerned because of gutter oil incident that could not be found using traditional chemical method. The photo showed the abnormalities of the embryos if oil contained harmful toxin.

Finally, Dr. Chen introduced their business model included “Safe Products Testing Provider”, “Safe Products Quality Consultant” and “Safe Products Brand Builder”. Lastly, she mentioned their focus areas involved Cosmetics, Dairy, Edible Oil, Meat & Seafood and Water.

Q&A Session:

Mr. Peter Fung (Chairman, HKSQ) presented a souvenir to Dr. Xueping Chen.

Before end of the seminar, Dr. Albert Tsang (Former Chairman, HKSQ) introduced some coming activities such as ASQ Certification Program Introduction and HKSQ AGM talk about Zero Defect.

Reference:
HKSQ - www.hksq.org
HKSTP News - HKSTP companies bring home the highest global recognitions on innovation & HKSTP supports Vitargent to achieve laboratory accreditation
CityU News - Alumni win top international award with biotech invention

HKSTP APAC Innovation Summit 2015 - Robotic

The flagship innovation conference of Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTPC) named “APAC Innovation Summit 2015 – Robotics” was held from 24th -25th June 2015. Before the summit, I took a photo with my colleague Mr. Nathan Liu in front of the banner.

In the beginning, our chairman Mrs Fanny Law gave welcome speech to all participants. She said the mission of HKSTP was connecting different stakeholder and robotic would be one of new industries to be focused. Hong Kong is a good living laboratory to develop and test of different systematic technologies.

Mr. Johann Wong (Deputy Commissioner, Innovation and Technology Commission, HKSAR) gave an opening remark. He hoped Hong Kong was able to contribute in “Made in China 2025” and joining Robotic community included Health Care, Entertainment and Logistic Industry.

Then group photo with guest was taken.

The first speaker was Mr. Nury Vittachi (Journalist) and his topic named “Introduction”. Mr. Nury Vittachi introduced the story of robot and claimed that more than 50% of movies described robots in negative way. However, it could help many human being in future.

The second speaker was Prof. Homayoon Kazerooni (University of California at Berkeley) and he presented a topic entitled “Phoenix”. Phoenix is the latest exoskeleton from Kaz Lab for personal and home use. Firstly, Prof. Kazerooni briefed different robot related movies such as Alien, The Edge of Tomorrow, Ironman, District 9, etc.

Then Prof. Kazerooni analyzed that Back and Knee injuries were ranked as the number 1 and 2 workplace injuries from US Department of Labor. He use the diagram to classify the difficult of job performed by Disabled, Elderly, Practitioner, Workers and Soldiers.

Finally, Prof. Kazerooni introduced different Excoskeleton tools included “Trunk Support Excoskeleton”, “Leg Support Excoskeleton” and “Complete Exoskeleton”.

The third speaker was Prof. Robert Riener (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich) and his presentation was “Cybathlon: Benchmarking assistive robotic devices”. The Cybathlon is an international championship for racing pilots with disabilities (i.e., parathletes) who are using advanced robotic technologies that provide assistance for daily life activities. Firstly, Prof. Riener demonstrated the use of C-Leg Otto Bock.

Then Prof. Riener introduced “Powered Exoskeleton Race” included Powered Arm Prosthesis Race and Brain-Computer-Interface Race.

Prof. Gordon Cheng (Technische Universität München) was fifth speaker and his topic named “From neuroscience to robotic innovations”. His talk was highlight key robotic systems that had been taken from neuroscience. He said there were three areas of challenges such as Society, Science (Advancing our understanding of human sciences) and Engineering (Improving and bettering technological developments).

Then Prof. Cheng demonstrated his researches in the Institute for Cognitive Systems (ICS) included “Humanoid Balancing, Posture and Locomotion Control” (Diagram below), “Tasks and Skills Transfer”, “Tools for the body”, “Ball Swapping Task”, etc.

The Biological Motivation for an Artificial Skin was introduced. The following diagram used to compare biological skin cell and artificial skin cell. Each artificial skin cell contained different sensors.

Prof. Dario Floreano (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) was sixth speaker and his presentation entitled “Bio-inspired autonomous drones: From research to business”. His research was to simulate flying insect vision such as compound eyes.

Then Prof. Floreano demonstrated the 10-gram indoor microflyer which could perform obstacle avoidance and altitude control.

Prof. Floreano also explained the curved artificial compound eye. Moreover, another research was to develop adaptive morphology flyer like bird’s arm.

The last speaker in the morning session was Mr. Marc Papageorge (Spec Sensors) and his presentation was “Measurement of outdoor air quality using drones”. Firstly, Mr. Papageorge briefed “What gas sensors can do” including Health, Consumer, Safety, Security, Medical, Environmental, Commercial, Industrial and Automotive.

He said air quality for health, Safety and Security needed precise measurement which required by US EPA such as CO, NO2, SO2 and Ozone, etc. For consumer & medical devices, the breath analysis should include Alcohol (EtOH), Asthma (NO), Bad Breath (VSC’s/Sulphur) and Metabolic Rate (Ketones), etc. The six criteria pollutants for gases and particle size were showed in following diagram.

Finally, Mr. Papageorge used video to demonstrate how drone carried the sensor for monitoring CO.

After lunch, the discussion panel theme named “Hong Kong and the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. Prof. Norman Tien (HKU) was the moderator (Right). The panel members were Prof. Ning Xi (Michigan State University), Mr. Cristian Fanucci (Comau Robotics) and Mr. Kay Matzner (Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (IFF)) (Start from Left).

Mr. Kay Matzner said Industry 4.0 was Internet of Manufacturing included Big Data, Robot and IoT in Germany. He also said the key problem in China was data security loss. However, Hong Kong had advantage on data security. Nevertheless, Robotic could support high salary such as Hong Kong and Germany.
Prof. Ning Xi said Robot Connectivity would be the future. Big data analysis added into the physical world needed tools which were robotic. Moreover, robotic was very hot topic in China. He added one of advantages in Hong Kong was multi-culture.

 

Then Prof. Ning Xi (Michigan State University) presented his topic named “Ultra robots: Applications and challenges”.

He analyzed the robotics development in 3 dimension and the challenges were from Ultra Robots and Automation. Some research reviews were discussed such as “Super Media Enabled Internet-based Telerobotic Operations”, “Internet Based Tele-Diagnostics”, “Car Seat Tele Inspection System”, “Natural Language Control of Robotic Systems”, “Bio-inspired Design for Mobile Sensor Network”, and “Nano Manufacturing”.

Some demonstration booths were located outside. CityU’s one was collaborated with Prof. Ning Xi for developing Nanorobotic platform for fabrication of nanodevices.

HKU’s robot was also here.

(Remark: I haven’t attended the whole day summit because of other business at the same time.)

Reference:
HKSTP - http://www.hkstp.org
APAC Innovation Summit - http://www.apacinnosummit.net/aboutus

HKQAA CSR Strategic Planning and Reporting Workshop

The Workshop entitled “Latest Trends of CSR Strategic Planning and Getting Start of Your CSR Reporting Workshop – ESG, GRI G4 & ISO 26000 Guidelines” was organized by Hong Kong Quality Assurance Agency (HKQAA) on 22nd June 2015. Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) was one of supporting organizations. The seminar aimed to introduce the latest guidelines and initiatives for businesses to implement CSR and showcase its commitment to sustainable development through CSR reporting, as well as, giving an overview of the HKEx ESG Reporting Guideline and the upcoming GRI G4 Guideline. Before the workshop, I took a photo with Ms. Connie Sham for memory.

Ms. Connie Sham (Head of Audit, Strategic Business, HKQAA) was our guest speaker and her topic named “CSR Practices and Reporting”. In the beginning, Connie briefed some terms which we used frequently that were Sustainable Development, Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Sustainable Development and Sustainability were used interchangeable and focused on Environment, Social and Economic. CSR had triple bottom line as People, Profit and Planet. She mentioned the upstream was CSR Practices & Performance and the downstream was CSR Reporting.

The Part 1 was CSR Practices which included ISO 26000:2012 – Guidance for Social Responsibility and HKQAA CSR Index. We faced a challenge “How can business be profitable and contribute to social responsibility at the same time?” The answer may be “Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI)”. ISO 26000 could connect high level standards to daily operations. 7 core subjects in ISO 26000 were “Organization governance”, “Human rights”, “Labour practices”, “Fair operating practices”, “Consumer issues”, “The environment”, and “Community Involvement and development”.

The schematic overview of ISO 26000 was discussed and we observed that the result of implement would be maximizing an organization’s contribution to Sustainable Development. Then Connie explained the 7 principles of Social Responsibility including “Accountability”, “Transparency”, “Ethical behavior”, “Respect, consideration & responsiveness towards stakeholder interests”, “Respect for the rule of law”, “Respect for international norms of behavior” and “Respect for human rights”.

After that Connie introduced HKQAA CSR Index which was launched in Dec 2008 and it aimed to promote the principles and guidelines of the ISO 26000 guidance on social responsibility. HKQAA CSR Advocate Index was “Improvement driven” index to enable the participating organizations to determine CSR maturity and strive for continuous improvement. There were 5 scoring categories and 40 recommended CSR practices.

HKQAA CSR index’s 7 principles and 40 recommended CSR practices are showed as follows.

The Part 2 was CSR Reporting. Connie introduced Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines history since 2000. Then she mentioned 5 step process included “Define (Scope & Boundary)”, “Connect (Stakeholder)”, “Prepare (Data + Information)”, “Report (How? Format?)” and “Monitor (Review / Feedback)”.

The GRI G4 Frame was discussed. GRI G4 was aligned with International Integrated Report Council (IIRC) and also supported XBRL which was extensible business report language.

For identifying material aspects and boundaries, we needed to get stakeholders’ involvement to find out their concerns (e.g. survey, interview or focus group) and then using visual representative of prioritization of aspects. X-axis was social impact and Y-axis was stakeholder interests.

The last topic related Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) ESG Report. ESG stands for Environment, Social and Governance. The guide has issued since 2013. There were four subject areas included “Workplace Quality (4 Aspects & 9 KPIs)”, “Environmental Protection (3 Aspects & 14 KPIs)”, “Operating Practices (3 Aspects & 9 KPIs)” and “Community Involvement (1 Aspect & 2 KPIs)”.

Reference:
HKQAA - http://www.hkqaa.org
HKQAA CSR Index - http://www.hkqaa.org/en_gsservice.php?catid=7
HKSQ - http://www.hksq.org/