Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): Experience Sharing by ASTRI on implementation of ISO 9001 for R&D Company and visit to Smart City Innovation Centre

During visit CEPREI in Guangzhou on 18 May, ASTRI R&D manager told me that they had implemented ISO 9001 for corporate-wide R&D projects for long time. I was very interested in they implementation ISO 9001 on R&D Company so that I asked their Chairman Mr. MY Wong that I would like to learn more about it. Mr. Wong kindly linked me up with their management team and arranged a visit and sharing session for me on 9 July 2018. Actually, HKSTP and ASTRI quality system team had experience sharing since 2015. I had arranged a visit for our TSC to sharing ISO 27001 certification experience on 30 Jun 2015. In the beginning, I met Mr. Jim Hui (Senior Manager, Quality, Quality Management, ASTRI) and took a photo in front of main entry.

Before sharing, I saw many joint laboratories brand in the wall.

After that Mr. Jim Hui explained ISO 9001 implementation in ASTRI to me and I summarized some key issues below.

ASTRI certified by ISO 9001 since 2013 and upgrade to ISO 9001:2015 in 2017. The certification scope is “Provision of research, development and commercialization in the area of information and communications technologies. CB is BVC. They have 5 implementation stages as follows:

Stage 1: Awareness and Planning

Through kickoff meeting with R&D representatives and task team understood R&D staff concern and provided awareness training so as to remove their misunderstanding on ISO 9001.

Stage 2: Review and Assessment

Review AS-IS process and perform Gap Analysis (compared with ISO 9001 requirement). Then develop different action plans.

Stage 3: Development

In here, SOP writing training should be provided to set up ISO procedures.

Stage 4: Implementation & Verification

They provided corporate-wide training through in-house 10 seminars for R&D colleagues.

Stage 5: Seek Certification

Pre-certification audit, stage 1 and stage 2 audits were performed.

Jim told me benefits to ASTRI for ISO 9001 included better documentation, greater quality awareness, improved customer satisfaction, increase efficiency, competitive advantage, enhance communication and positive culture change.

There were several key success factors and I selected some important items below:

- Top management commitment and involvement (Direction, Resource & Commitment)

- Involve all levels, jobs and areas in the organization (ISO Concept & Spirit)

- Understand the organization processes, interactions and control points (Design & Business Nature)

- Ensure the ISO system is easy to use, etc.

Their document management centralized archived R&D project records with access permission controlled. They employed K2 and Sharepoint for electronic document system.

For Knowledge Management, research team performed project milestone knowledge briefing and archive in the centralized repository with access permission controlled.

After briefed the organization context, Jim explained ASTRI QMS Risk, Opportunities and Action Plan to address the risks and opportunities. That methodology was made reference to ISO 27001. The items included Risks, Opportunities, Action Plans, Integration into QMS and Evaluation of Effectiveness.

Thanks Mr. MY Wong link up for this sharing. (Photo was taken in FHKI seminar on 13 Feb 2018)

When I left ASTRI, I found that the Smart City Innovation Centre (SCIC) located in the ground floor. I met Mr. Mark Li (Manager, Technical Marketing, ASTRI) and took a photo in front of the centre. To embrace the fast-approaching 5G era, ASTRI and Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation have proudly set up the Smart City Innovation Centre (SCIC) in July 2017.

SCIC aims at providing a proper environment and the sought-after resources for small-medium enterprises (SMEs), industry partners, research institutes and universities to take part in the 5G development in Hong Kong. 3D screen for naked eye was showed in the entrance.