Source: CNBM

Date: September 28, 2015

On September 23 to 24, ANQ Congress 2015 was held in Taipei. ANQmember organizations from 17 countries and regions such as China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Russia, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc., as well as more than 400 representatives attended the event. The theme of the Congress is “Using Quality as Differentiator to Gain Competitive Advantage”.

After selection of the panelists, Mr. Song Zhiping, Chairman of China National Building Materials Group Corporation (CNBM) emerged victorious among the 15 candidates, winning the Ishikawa-Kano Award. Dr. Noriaki Kano, founder of the award, presented it to Mr. Song. The award is an international award to honor people who make distinct contributions in pushing on the theories and practices of quality control in Asia. It is the most authoritative award in the field of quality management in Asia.

Mr. Song worked for Beijing New Building Materials Plant since 1980, as the laboratory director, devoting himself to quality management. He successively went abroad to Germany, Sweden and Japan to learn quality management, and successfully brought modern quality managing methods such as variance analysis and fishbone diagram into real working. In early 1990s when Mr. Song was the factory director, he defined “quality and credit: lifelong pursuit of BNBM” as the company’s quality guideline, and vigorously moving forward with plans to build quality management systems such as ISO9000 and ISO14000. Through many years’ hard work, BNBM created a method of development that centers on quality. It created its own high-end brand and gained victory by quality, turning itself to be the biggest plasterboard enterprise in the world. It created its own high-end brand and gained victory by quality, turning itself to be the biggest plasterboard enterprise in the world. In both technology and quality, Dragon Brand plasterboard has won over the world market, showing the international competitiveness of China brands in the global arena.

In 2002, Mr. Song became the general manager of CNBM. He prioritized quality among all things of the group, and pushed on the operation and integration of quality management system. He built up a comprehensive quality control model with Chinese characteristics, making the group an innovation driven, quality-benefit oriented, service oriented and socially responsible enterprise. In 2013, CNBM topped the list of most valuable self-own brands of manufacturing industry in China in terms of metallurgy and building materials, with a brand strength of 82.8. In July 2015, CNBM again remained its first position in China's 500 Most Valuable Brands, released by the World Brand Lab.

Mr. Song gave his acceptance speech at the Congress. He thanked China Association for Quality and ANQ for giving him such an honor. He believed the award belonged to the 180 thousand leaders and employees of CNBM more. Mr. Song also mentioned the importance of quality management to the sustainable development and international competitiveness for an enterprise, as he felt during his 30 years of work. For the last 30 years, Asian enterprises, especially Chinese ones, have gained much improvement in terms of quality management, and the success owes much to the leaders that keep exploring, pioneers of quality management and a series of entrepreneurs like Ishikawa Kaoru, Yuan Baohua and Liu Yuanzhang.

Mr. Song said that quality is both the starting point and the finishing point of all works at an enterprise. Complacency prevents the success of quality management. We always need to find ways to improve it. It’s a long journey to realize best quality management, and all we need to do is to try harder. Mr. Song received positive reviews and responds from the attendees.