Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): ANQ Congress 2018 Almaty, Kazakhstan

Asian Network for Quality (ANQ) Congress 2018 was held in InterContinental Hotel, Almaty, Kazakhstan was held from 19-20 Sep 2018. The congress theme was “The Future of Quality Leadership in IT-Age”. Before the congress, Minda and I took a photo in front of the banner.

During registration, I met many Quality Professionals in different regions and countries and took photos for memory.

Dr. Duan Yonggang (段永剛) (CAQ) and I took a photo with Prof. Noriaki Kano.

Then I took photos with CAQ friends.

(Left: Ms. Duan Yihong (段一泓), I and Prof. Tang Xiaoqing (唐曉青) (Vice-chairperson, CAQ))

(Left: Ms. Wang Lilin (王麗林), Prof. Tang Xiaoqing (唐曉青) and I)

I together with SQI and CSQ professionals took photo with Prof. Kano.

(Left: Mr. Kenneth Liang (SQI), Prof. Kano, Mr. Kitson Leonard Lee (SQI), I (HKSQ) and Prof. Ching-Chow Yang (楊錦洲) (CSQ))

SQAT, CSQ, JSQC, ISQ, HKSQ, SQI and VQAH, as well as KOQIM representative took a photo together.

(Left: Prof. Phulporn Sangbangpla (SQAT), Prof. Ching-Chow Yang (CSQ), Prof. Noriaki Kano (JSQC), Mr. Janak Mehta (ISQ), I (HKSQ), Mr. Kenneth Liang (SQI), Dr. Ngo Van Nhon (VQAH) and Representative (KOQIM))

Opening Plenary Session

In the beginning, Prof. Azat Abdrakhmanov (Chairman of the Congress Organizing Committee, Chairman of ANQ & President of KOQIM) gave a welcome speech and he was pleased to meet all delegates and guests of the Congress who arrived with the purpose of exchanging modern experience and knowledge in the fields of quality management. ANQ was an excellent platform for the participants to create friendly and partnership ties, launch new fruitful cooperation with representatives of not only the Asian continent, but also other parts of worlds.

Mr. Yeldos Ramazanov (Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs of the Republic of Kazakhstan) gave greeting speech. (In Kazakhstan language)

Mr. Arman Shakkaliyev (Chairman of Government Committee for Technical Regulation and Metrology of the Republic of Kazakhstan) gave greeting speech and thank you for the active work on quality promotion in the work of the ANQ Congress 2018. He said that adoption of the Law “About Standardization” would promote import substitution, increase of competitiveness, resource saving and development of effective management of production and personnel.

Prof. Noriaki Kano (Honorary Chairman of ANQ) gave a greeting speech. He reviewed the development of ANQ since 2002. Quality of Human Life was one of reasons for existence of ANQ.

The first keynote speaker was Prof. Mohamed Zairi (UK) and his presentation topic entitled “Defining the Role of Quality in an Uncertain Future: The Disruptive Thinking of Quality 4.0”. Firstly, he mentioned the disruptive cumulative effect of the digital revolution (Digital Disruption) which had affecting our daily life and forcing the world of business to drastically change approaches, methods and purpose of a business organization.

Then Prof. Zairi briefed the history of industrial revolutions which added AI and IT (Big Data, IoT & Cloud) for the fourth industrial revolution. He quoted Lean Startup (Riemer, 2013) that “Changes enabled by digital technologies that occur at a pace and magnitude that disrupt established ways of value creation, social interactions, doing business and more generally our thinking”. Prof. Zairi said mobile devices were becoming our brain and digital disruption had already happened such as Uber owned no taxis, Airbnb owned no real estate, Alibaba owned no inventory, facebook owned no content, etc.

After that Prof. Zairi briefed Quality 4.0 that blended new technologies with traditional quality methods to arrive at new optimums in operational excellence, performance, and innovation. It included new technologies such as Machine Learning, AI, IoT, Big Data, Cloud Computing and Blockchain, etc. He added organization excellence may not be enough when the customer is ignored. Excellence is only possible if Customers are happy. “The Quality of Indulgence is characterized by Mass Commoditization and Personalization” he said.

Finally, Prof. Zairi stated the Value Creation Continuum from Basic Product Orientation to Differentiated Product Orientation to Service Orientation to Experience Orientation and then to Indulgence Orientation. He added the organization excellence continuum was from Variation to Volume to Variety to Value to Vivacity and then to Velocity.

At the end, Prof. Zairi introduced the six principles of Quality 4.0 below:

1. Making Quality the License to Manage the Organization

2. Redefining Quality to ensure the organization remains Relevant

3. Ensuring that Quality Orientation is the Driver of Organization Excellence

4. Developing Transformational and Disruptive Capability

5. Building Excellence Maturity through Transformation based Performance Impact

6. Sustaining the Path of Excellence by Shaping the Future through Disruptive Quality Behavior

Prof. Wan Seon Shin (President of KSPE, Former President of KSQM and Professor, Sungkyunkwan University) was the second keynote speaker and his topic named “Korean Way for Excellence in Quality”. In the beginning, Prof. Shin briefed Korea history and recently political changing.

Then Prof. Shin introduced the “V” of Innovation in KOREA. In 1960, Korea GDP growth was ranked 29^th(compared with Philippines with 19^th). Now, Korea had significantly changed. He quoted the Quality-First Leadership from Samsung that “It’s all about building a Culture of Perpetual Crisis.”

And then Prof. Shin introduced the strategic inflection point that was criteria to change the development of company to be excellent or bankrupt!

After that he reviewed their culture included “Blame Others” that they needed to make the people enjoy quality! Through National Quality Management Convention selected 1446 National Quality Masters for Quality Leadership upto 2017. He also added another their culture was “Find My Strengths”. Using the “V” of Quality in Samsung, it changed from self-call second class to the first class through innovation. Prof. Shin quoted Lee Kun-hee statement “Change everything… except your wife and kids”. Prof. Shin also analyzed different Korea companies employed different quality tools as the following diagram.

Those quality tools and philosophies were classified as Mind, Competency, Method, System and Partnership.

Lastly, Prof. Shin raised that Quality Responsibility and Open Quality for Next Korea. Open Quality was assuring quality by the organic cooperation system while sharing the element quality level in real time. Inner and outer factors such as supplier, equipment innovation, technological innovation, legal regulation change are transparently connected. At the end, Prof. Shin introduced Korean Way for Quality Culture as follows:

1. Keep Standards

2. Measure Quality

3. Communicate Quality

4. Find Best Practices

He concluded that Quality keep the light!

The third speaker was Mr. Lin Hai (Chief Strategic Branding Consultant, Brand Society of China Association for Quality (BSCAQ)) and his presentation was “Total Brand Management in China”. Mr. Lin briefed the BSCAQ Vision (Helping enterprises to build global brands), Mission (Building quality brands) and Values (Responsibility, Professionalism, Innovation and Achieving win-win).

“China is the world’s largest manufacturing country by 2010 but the branding of manufacturing enterprise lags behind” said by Mr. Lin. Therefore, China Brand Day was established on 10 May 2017 to implement brand strategy. Then Mr. Lin briefed their survey research by the brand incubation pilot demonstration enterprise using “Manufacturing Enterprise Brand Management Maturity Model”.

Finally, Mr. Lin obtained the overall maturity of brand management of manufacturing enterprises was 62.73. He also concluded that brand awareness had improved but brand management still needed to be strengthened such as scientific and systematic brand cultivation.

Lastly, Mr. Lin Hai proposed Total Brand Management (TBM) which referred to a series of decision-making and management activities for enterprises to systematically create, manage, maintain, operate and update various brands around the strategy.

Solemn Signing Ceremony of the Agreement between ANQ and National Chamber of Entrepreneurs of the Republic of Kazakhstan “Atameken”.

Discussion panel

Group photo for the panelists.

During the break, Prof. Azat was interviewed by local media.

I had took photo with keynotes and quality professional.

(Left: Prof. Wan Seon Shin, Prof. Youn Sung Kim, I and Prof. M. Minsuk Shin (Korea))

(Left: I, Prof. Mohamed Zairi and Mr. Claes Berlin (CEO, Qube))

(Left: Mr. Anil Sachdev (President, TQMI), I and Prof. SP Kuan (官生平))

(Left: Ms. Minda Chiang (HKSQ), I, Prof. Ching-Chow Yang (楊錦洲) (Former President, CSQ) and Mrs. Yang)

Dr. Sanatan Kulshresth (India) and I)

(Left: Mr. Ten Gheng Een (Chairman, SQI), Prof. Matthew Minsuk Shin (Korea) and I)

Prof. Tan Cher Ming (SQI) and I

Prof. Vo Phuoc Tan (Dean of Postgraduate, HCMC University of Industry (HUI) and I took a photo. We met in ANQ Congress 2011 and the technical visit was in Prof. Tan’s university.

Photo with Mr. Jagannathan Ravikant (Asso. Academician in IAQ)

Photo with Prof. Yamada Shu (Keio University, Japan)

Minda took a photo with Prof. Shu’s student named “Yumiko Taguchi”. Her surname was very famous in Quality Engineering field because of “Taguchi Method”.

Minda also give a gift “Moon case” to Mr. Juhani Anttila (Former President, Finland Society for Quality). He had visited Hong Kong and gave us a talk on 15 Dec 2017.

Plenary Session – II

Prof. Azat Abdrakhmanov (Chairman of the Congress Organizing Committee, Chairman of ANQ & President of KOQIM) was the fourth keynote speaker and his topic named “Asian Excellence Model in Performance (AEMP) is the way to leadership and International Recognition”. In the beginning, Prof. Azat briefed benefits of Excellence Model projects including innovation and idea generation enhancement, customer and stakeholders’ satisfaction, as well as, organization growth and sustainability, etc.

Then Prof. Azat introduced AEMP project which aimed to motivate Asian Small and Medium enterprises for leadership and was approved by ANQ Board in 2018. It needed to create an ANQ register of the leading companies and demonstrated best practices at ANQ website. The base criteria of AEMP was showed as following diagram.

After that Prof. Azat briefed the framework of AEMP including “Essential Principles”, “External Evaluation Tool”, “Evaluation Procedure”, “Self-evaluation Procedure”, and “Basic Criteria”.

At the end, Prof. Azat stated the award level of AEMP including Recognition on National level, on Asian level and Asian Excellence Award.

The fifth keynote speaker was Mr. Claes Berlin (CEO, Qube (RUSSIA)) and his topic entitled “from WHAT to HOW”. That related to your People, your Products/Services and your Clients. He raised the term LTBA – Long Term Business Assurance.

Then Mr. Claes Berlin shared SAAB ERICSSON SPACE “change” Journey. He showed different components in spaceship which enhanced by his team. He said that we were real professionals in our business and we did not always do what we should do but what we wanted to do. But their managers had high workload of the daily operation matters and paid too little attention to planning, communication, strategy and coaching, as well as, too many projects did not fulfill planned cost targets and/or promised delivery time. So they decided to go from WHAT to HOW!

Firstly, he said they set the business targets and ISO 9001 certificate.

Then Mr. Claes Berlin introduced Hourglass for external environment from strategic direction to WHAT and using System for HOW.

After that he mentioned “Creative Destruction” as the process of change that from “Fixed” to “Floating” and then to “Flexible”. It was from “Take Down” (To create motivation for change) to “Built Up” (To create stability by integrating the change). He concluded to use the methods of business process management including Crisis Management, Start-up companies, Eye-opener and developing more effective management system and restructure such organization change with company culture development.

Mr. Juhani Anttila (Former President, Finland Society for Quality; Academician of IAQ) was the last keynote speaker in Day 1 of Congress and his topic was “Quality Challenges to the Startups”. He said that startups were the human institutions to operate under conditions of extreme uncertainty. The old general management models and the traditional quality management practices did not work in the startups.

Firstly, Mr. Juhani Anttila briefed that startups still needed professional quality concepts and quality management practices for getting a competitive advantage in which it needed to embed within the normal business management activities.

Then he mentioned the external and internal contexts, foundations for the quality approach in the startups consists of the value network including legal, technological, competitive, market, cultural, social and economic environments. Internal contexts related process approach such as for new product development and launching process.

Mr. Juhani Anttila discussed the technology life cycle of a product in which the most difficulty barrier of the growth was overcoming the “Chasm”.

Finally, he introduced the innovation realization process for improved quality for startups and shared practical experience for applying the quality concepts and practices within a startup such as Startup Institution at the University of Helsinki in 2017.