CityU scholar elected as Fellow of the American Society for Quality

Dr Chin Kwai-sang, Associate Professor in the Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management at City University of Hong Kong (CtiyU), was elected as a Fellow of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) in November 2007 in recognition of his contribution to the research and promotion of quality engineering and management.

Dr Chin is the third scholar from the Greater China Region to have earned such a prestigious honour. The appointment represents further international recognition of the achievements of CityU’s academics.

The ASQ is a leading quality organization in the world, with more than 100,000 individual and corporate members and about 600 fellows. The Society recognised Dr Chin’s exceptional international service to the Chinese quality community as a representative of the ASQ and his dedicated academic research into manufacturing applications of the theory and practice of quality in Hong Kong and inspiring leadership of national quality management initiatives throughout the entire Asia-Pacific region.

Dr Chin has been conducting research related to quality for more than 20 years. Joining the ASQ as a member in 1991, he was appointed the Hong Kong representative in 2000. He works as a coordinator for more than 200 local members and organises visits for overseas members to Hong Kong to promote understanding of local quality management and interaction with local quality professionals. Dr Chin is also a Fellow of the Hong Kong Society for Quality and Hong Kong Quality Management Association.

Dr Chin was very pleased to receive one of the highest honours presented by the ASQ. It is recognition of his work in promoting quality management in the region. “Hong Kong has been working hard on quality and this trend has been extended to mainland China,” he said. “Promoting quality engineering and management can foster the development of various industries and services in the Greater China Region.”

Dr Chin has been actively encouraging collaboration among quality associations in different countries and promoting the awareness of quality management in the region. He successfully enlisted collaboration among quality associations of Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan in 2001 and established the Asia Quality Network in 2003, which has now 16 organisations in the region enlisted as members.

Dr Chin has focused in recent years on promoting the concept of quality assurance and developing tools and concepts to assist manufacturers in identifying potential quality problems in the products at the design stage. He pointed out that the many incidents of substandard quality recently found in products made on the mainland clearly reflected that factory owners only put effort into quality control of the finished products, without thinking about managing the quality of the product at the design phase.

Dr Chin said there was a need for Hong Kong to train more professionals of quality engineering and management and to set up appropriate quality assurance mechanisms in the region. There is a high market demand for quality engineering and management professionals, as many employers require that the graduates of his department possess the related knowledge and skills.

Dr Chin is constantly enhancing the curriculum of quality engineering and management courses at CityU based on his contacts with international experts and constant collation of new data and information. He supervised CityU students participating in competitions organised by Hong Kong Society for Quality for the past three years. The students visited corporations, studied quality issues and came up with proposals to improve their products. Dr Chin said the activity could help students apply their quality engineering and management knowledge to real-life corporate situations and to acquire first hand information on current quality issues.

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