April 10, 2023 The National Center for Sustainable Development (NCSD) held in person discussions with the leadership of the Zhongguancun Industry & Information Research Institute of Two-dimensional Code Technology (ZIIOT), a national NGO registered under the Ministry of Civil Affairs in Beijing. The nature of these discussions is to build cooperatively upon ZIIOT ‘s unique existing framework of prior validation in 2018 by the relevant international standards setting organizations of ISO (International Organization for Standardization,) CEN (European Standards Committee,) and AIM (Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility) to become the global code issuer designated MA. This effort is consistent with the State Policy of Digital Transformation for all sectors of Chinese industry.
ZIIOT’s remarkable scope of creating (product DNA) will benefit the global supply chain and in essence labels every “genuine” product manufactured, grown, finished, in whole or in part in China, with a specific code attesting to origin and dozens of other identifiers in the applied code. After years of struggling to confirm “genuineness” for products produced in China, for the domestic or global market: the ability to verify each products origin when and where manufactured is a creation of immense value to the global market.
NCSD believes that this will have great implications for the drive to quality as well as workplace safety and hopefully a powerful tool perhaps against alleged patent infringement – since now the origin of the product is verified when created. Any firm, without authorization, cannot get the global quality standard of the ZIIOT “seal of approval.” Not to say, those who seek to “fake” will ever stop trying, but this is a “Great Digital Wall” to overcome. This action, of creating “product DNA” should be globally welcome and ensures that buyers are getting what they pay for and can prove it!
Case Study:
EDN TECHNOLOGIES Quality Manufacturing Solution: Digital Inspection and Audit
NCSD brought to the meeting the case of a Canadian SME firm E-Data Now and its China JV operation EDN TECHNOLOGIES which NCSD has worked with for the last three years has crafted and successfully deployed its “Audit and Inspection Digital Transformation System” which has clients in over 30 countries and has a successful track record in China working with a number of supply chain companies in the Chinese automobile industry. EDN TECHNOLOGIES is a “ground up” approach to converting existing manufacturing practices into “digitally transformed” data driven manufacturing through their approach to constant quality “inspection and audit “processes.
The need to drive for Quality through data management informs decision-making and can be the foundation for many process aspects which, while small as individual matters can become major when seen in the aggregate. The teaming of ZIIOT and EDN TECHNOLOGIES can, in the opinion of NCSD, create a global assurance of high standards and care which in turn can identify many different layers of valuable information for the entire supply and value-added chain.
A good way to view EDN TECHNOLOGIES ’s approach is constant quality checking and evaluation by means of a digital software cycle designed to share data on factors that evaluate metrics of energy and resource management, design continuity and high production standards. The goal is to reduce waste, energy, emissions and to build parts compared to the highest norm rather than the last one produced. Evidence of the value of this system is to bring standards of quality up throughout the work ecosystem and to allow managers access to fully integrated real time production data.
Naturally, in the short space available here, the efforts by all institutions: ZIIOT, EDN TECHNOLOGIES and NCSD cannot be fully enumerated: NCSD’s mission is fulfilled in the fact that economic development is fostered by this relationship building and on behalf of the Board of Trustees of NCSD we believe the parties can discover many more things we have in common than separate us.
