Directors Travel Blog September 2009: Vietnam Journal

Day 1  I said that I would keep you updated on our trek West with the NIST Standards In Trade Workshop.  We’ve arrived Hanoi a few minutes after Midnight on Tuesday. Labor Day virtually disappeared in the white haze of the polar arc from Washington to Seoul; the sun never winked out for even a moment of the fourteen hours air-time, made tolerable by alternately snoozing and snacking and in-flight entertainment. It’s probably lunch where you are now, but we’re just getting settled for an uneasy, out-of-sync sleep, twenty four hours en route and a cycle of day-night inversion. The flight was actually not as painful as some…been on worse. Hardly been on better, honestly. The trick is to ignore the saddle sores and with providence, the turbulence, and sweet sound of wailing babies…

Day 2  Another day, another dong. Actually, 15,000 dong what you get for your dollar. It’s down by a 1,000 dong since first arriving here a couple of years ago (it still goes a long way, though). The Vietnamese economy, in general, is “off”, just like the rest of the world, but the GDP growth is still something like 4%, which is positive, at least. There is a strong appetite for consumer goods, cell phone and an array of food products, which are varied and unique and sometimes creatively brought from farm to fork…

Days 3&4 Vietnam Journal: Building on a Common Past and an Entwined Future…

125 Years of Engineering Excellence

IEEE One-Hundred Twenty-Fifth Birthday Celebration in Philly

Indigo was the sky and bright was the mood in Ben’s home town as the EMC Society celebrated the one hundred and twenty fifth anniversary of the beginning of the IEEE. The Philadelphia EMC Society chapter hosted a gathering of the EMC community that included several of the founders of the EMC Society and the EMC Society Board of Directors.

View from the Top of the Ben Franklin Institute

One hundred guests attended the event at the Ben Franklin museum in downtown Philly to enjoy presentations about the origins of the IEEE and the important contributions its members have made over the years.

The IEEE was formed when the two original engineering societies, the Institute of Radio Engineers and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers merged. The IEEE has been associated with the work of many famous scientists, engineers and inventors, including Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and Nikolai Tesla, to name a few of many. Considering that these minds were able to elaborate complex physical electrical engineering theories and devices using wood, wire, feathers and fur, it is a cause for celebration. More interesting is digging under and around some of the personalities of the scientific glitterati and the jealousies that inflamed the great early discoverers of induction, radiation and other unseen behavior.

Tesla, for example, despised Edision. Apparently Edison had promised the Serbian wunderkind a bonus of some kind, but shorted him. This incident became part of a life-long feud between the two men whose views of AC and DC were out of phase, so to speak.

But there was no such enmity at our little gathering last month. Old friends and colleagues celebrated a reunion.

Future and Past Presidents Francesca Maradei and Andy Drozd

The EMC Society was formed just over fifty years ago to address the concerns of radio interference. Since its inception, it has grown to over 4,000 members worldwide, and counts on its roster engineers from every major company in the world.

The meeting was presided over by Graham Kilshaw and Finn O’Connor, chairs of the Philadelphia chapter, and included welcome remarks from Elya Joffee, President of the EMC Society, and Dr Lew Terman, past president of the IEEE.

Robert Goldblum and Elya Joffe

The event began with a rooftop reception overlooking the heart of Downtown Philadelphia. In attendance were several past presidents and founding members of the society, including Bob Goldblum, Warren Kesselman, Dan Hoolihan, Don Heirman, Dr. Ralph Showers and Andy Drozd.

Dan Hoolihan welcomes Ralph Showers and Warren Kesselman

After the presentations the Philadelphia chapter received the Philadelphia section’s Chapter of the Year Award from President Joffee, and the Philadelphia IEEE section Chairman – Mr. Jack Nachamkin.

Philly Chapter gets Chapter of the Year Award from the Section

Washington Laboratories would like to congratulate the IEEE for one hundred and twenty five years of success and congratulates the Philadelphia Chapter of the EMC Society on being selected local chapter of the year.

MCBC Steps Out with Suzhou

MCBC Steps Out:

Summit with Suzhou Leaders

Doing Business in China

By Mike Violette, Secretary, MCBC

We were “all in the same boat” at the Hyatt Regency in Bethesda on March 20th. Over 200 professionals, business leaders, state and local government turned out to hear some GOOD NEWS about international cooperation. The Maryland-China business connection is a success story that will sail through these tough economic storms. This message was loud and clear to the assembled: Opportunities are in the wind and the Suzhou leadership has a vision for their future.

The delegation of 15 senior leaders from Suzhou city (about 80 km from Shanghai, up the Yangtze a piece) dropped by Montgomery County by way of New York City on their tour of the US. I understand that they were off to Rio de Janeiro next, most certainly engaging Brazilian business interests at an equally high level.

MCBC was well-represented. Our own President Steve Drake got a chance to reinforce the MCBC message with DBED’s Managing Director International Investment & Trade Bob Walker and Maryland Secretary of State John McDonough.

Bob Walker, Steve Drake and John McDonough

All in the Same Boat

Mr. McDonough presented the Honorable Wang Rong, Secretary of the Suzhou Municipality and Senior Leader of the Jiangsu Provincial Government with a Proclamation that reinforced the business and cooperation commitment between the two trading partners.

Mr. Wang shows off the Maryland Proclamation

The Honorable Zhou Wenzhong, China’s Ambassador to the US provided the assembled with fine remarks on ongoing cooperation and the importance of keeping trade ties open and transparent (read: trade ‘wars’ are ultimately bad for both parties).

According to some, the US-China relationship is probably the most bi-lateral economic cooperation in this century. Without suffering any guilt about our unmitigated bias, we tend to agree.

The Meat of the Matter: The Suzhou Vision

During the presentation, the Suzhou leaders neatly laid out a visionary plan for their future. Over the next few years, they plan investments in infrastructure and key technologies that will put them in a pre-eminent position in the competitive coastal economic zones, if they are not there already: for example, currently, 70% of Laptop Computers are made in Suzhou, an astounding level of production. The next few years will see key investments in the several technology areas. Their 2010 goals include the following development and trade activities:

· Precision Machinery: $50B

· Opto-Electronics for Telecom, Integrated Circuit Development and a new generation of mobile telecom: $86B

· Bio-pharmaceutical for tumour and cardiovascular treatments: $2B

· Environmental, energy conservation, waste control: $3B

· NanoTechnologies and new materials: $2B

Over on this side of the Pacific, we have strong commitments to invest, too, but investment numbers like this are reserved for influential friends on Wall Street. I’d rather see a little more of the above spending. One thing for sure is the Chinese commitment to building hubs of concentrated development and manufacturing capability. This tends to create and intense balance of cooperation and competition.

One of the very interesting parts of the approach is the outline of the strategy for this area. In addition to the core technologies, the Suzhou leadership is putting an emphasis on advanced manufacturing methods that have, for a long time, been the purview of the US. Our strength on the innovation front has always been to push the state-of-the-art. It is really part of the evolutionary track any economy goes through, moving from low-tech manufacturing through to advanced materials and productions methods. China, if not matching the US in economic output, already runs parallel in many areas of technology.

The key take-away was that there still is good news out there for planning and investment and the long-term strategy, investing and international cooperation. We would be well-served to first, understand the scope of the development and to prepare for its impact on our technology sectors.

Underscoring the dominant position of Maryland in this regards was Secretary of the Maryland’s Department of Business and Economic Development, Christian Johansson who outlined our home state’s achievements in business and reinforced DBED’s commitment to International Trade and investment. Maryland has the second highest concentration of technology, the highest concentration of PhDs in the workforce and a great foundation of federal, state and university cooperation.

Christian Johansson, Secretary DBED

Montgomery County Council Executive Isiah Leggett and Mr. Wang Rong signed the Memorandum on Strengthening Economic Cooperation and Friendship between Montgomery County and Suzhou.

This document demonstrates the mutual ongoing commitment. The government folks have said it’s a go. It’s really up to us to the biz folks to make things happen.

Isiah Leggett and Wang Rong

And making things happen are our very own MCBC Director Jerry Solomon, President Steve Drake, Director Kristin Mowry and our new friends Wei ling Li CEO of Loci Software and Jimi Jones, Director of International Development for Aquaspace Water Systems.

Loci Software does enterprise development and has 100 engineers in Suzhou already.

Aquaspace makes water purification systems in Forestville, MD.

Juanita Hardy of Tiger Management and Eddie Resende of The World Trade Center Institute in Baltimore are long-time friends of MCBC.

Juanita’s firm is working to develop new methods and processes for helping expand US companies operations in China. Eddie, fresh from emceeing the WTCI’s Leadership Awards puts resources together for international and domestic clients. He also knows where all the good Brazilian restaurants are. Just ask him.

Rhein Tech Laboratories President Desmond Fraser and MCBC Member Tony Lau got a chance to be re-acquainted.

Both are technology mavens (Tony’s background includes satellite communications systems development. Desmond has been operating RTL for over 20 years and is Director of AmericanTCB with offices in Beijing, Taipei, Shenzhen and Shangai).

And, finally, a catered lunch always raises the spirit.

Thanks to the many sponsors and supporters of this event, namely:

• Suzhou Municipal Government
• Maryland Department of Business & Economic Development
• Maryland’s Office of the Secretary of State
• Montgomery County Department of Economic Development
• Monte Jade Science & Technology Association of Greater Washington, D.C. Area
• World Trade Center Institute
• Robert H. Smith School of Business
• Greater Baltimore Technology Council
• Chinese Biopharmaceutical Association
• Maryland-China Business Council
• Maryland Center China

Mike Violette, March 2009

Friends of MCBC

Washington Laboratories

AmericanTCB

IEEE EMC Founders Found

Leonard Keeps Giving: Another Dig Into The Past

Mike Violette

About thirty minutes from the National Archives is a humble storage complex at Tysons Corner, an architectural inversion of the federalist-style granite building that cradles the scriptures from the founding of our country. For the EMC Society, this humble Virginia facility holds the recovered scrolls from our early summer trip to Leonard Thomas’ inner sanctum, a critical link to the history of our group’s founding.

As Summer reluctantly left the stage to Fall on a brilliant blue-sky Friday, Dan Hoolihan, EMCS Historian, continued his hunt for the near-legendary, possibly mythical list of the names of the original EMC Founders. Words have been whispered, theories proposed and emails exchanged: somewhere in the first secretary’s earthly possessions was that fabled List. That morning, fortified by a life-shortening, but delicious egg and sausage and swiss cheese breakfast sandwich, lovingly assembled on a fresh multi-grain brioche and washed down with a truly above average cup of coffee, we advanced like knights in search of the Holy Grail, but with maybe less ecclesiastical fervor and certainly less clunking, and not on steeds, but in four cylinder sedans.

As traffic in Tysons wound up to its usual frenetic and loathsome neck-muscle tightening swirl, we set forth off to find it: The List.

Once again, we found much more.

Dan’s reverent guidance was simple and direct, I posit not unlike Lewis Leakey’s gentle words to his staff as the first indications of the fossilized bones of Australopithecus afarensis or Lucy were swept clean of eons of limbo. “Careful lads,” I imagine him saying. “The smallest scrap might hold the biggest clue.”

Maybe we would be as lucky and our Lucy would be brought to light. It was with measured optimism that we pulled into a cookie-cutter orange storage company where people keep their treasures that they rarely visit and have mostly forgotten: toys they no longer play with and clothes that don’t fit and appliances that will never again feel a crackling glow in their electrical circulatory system.

Not unlike Howard Carter’s feeling of elation upon discovering the resting place of Tutankhamen (ok, ok it’s a stretch), we gently coaxed the cypherlock open.

With a soft click the door yielded and we entered the climate-controlled tomb of unloved prized possessions.

With a clattering rattle, the overhead metal door was flung open and light bathed a wondrous scene. We had to pause and catch our breath, brows wet, despite the conditioned air of the place. My nostrils filled with the sweet smell of timeless nostalgia; the air swirled mysteriously overhead as a motor kicked to life someplace (did I catch a whiff of mimeograph ink?). I reeled for a moment. In those lovely white cardboard sarcophagi was the march of time, possibly five decades or more: pencil, pen, carbon paper, Xerox, thermal facsimile, so many ways of communicating.

Again back to Carter: I imagined him studying the cuneiform and hieroglyphs under flickering lights. If only we could douse the glaring incandescent lights and hold torches to our treasure, we might then understand fully that thrill.  Unfortunately, the Fairfax County Fire Department generally frowns upon the possession and burning of kerosene-soaked torches in enclosed spaces.

The Forties

We set to work, opening the boxed files as hundreds of voices of EMC past fairly chattered. We searched each and every file in pursuit of the List. At another time, with more leisure, each set of documents could entertain and inform for hours. But time was against us.

Did we fear that the precious documents would crumble to dust? Or was there a meticulous but benign spirit whose essence shadowed the fifty years of carefully-typed minutes and meetings? Did the engineers who invented the devices in the catalogs and specifications cry out in haunting voices: “Remember My Oscillator. I Have Created It!”? Or did we feel the ghost of a WWII Navy Technician, forever bound to the Earth, hopelessly searching for the Spare Parts Catalog for Panoramic Radio Receivers, published nineteen forty five? No, no–No such thing, all imagined.  Dan had to hop a plane at noon.

The Fifties

Advancing my search a decade and more than slightly off-task, I marveled at the deft innovation of the motor-operated “Mechanical Sweep Drive” from the General Radio Catalog which “attaches to knobs, dials or shafts” to speed EMC tests. Even in its infancy, a certain tedium accompanied our work. Confession: It has not been too long since we rigged an electric drill to our venerable HP 8672 signal generator to accomplish the same thing. (And a paper clip jammed in the frequency increment button does the trick on an 8656.) As to the frequency standard, I can’t imagine calculating the uncertainty accompanying a calibration on the four hundred pound, seven foot rack of wire, knobs and tubes.

A third box produced a yellowing kraft-paper envelope which granted us some more gold, complete with black and white photographs. Locale: off the coast of California. Maybe a studied propeller-head reader of this journal can weigh in on the make and model of the airplane while the rest of us can marvel at the RF rig that this young engineer is using to do his EMC thing. Check out the “graphical interface”: pre-pandisplay; pre-Polaroid; post-papyrus.

We’re not sure who this pioneer is (Leonard, himself, perhaps?), but the caption of the photo reads “ambient test” and this particular project looked like a site survey or RF system performance measurement of some kind; in the envelope were multiple aerial photos taken through the window of the small tail-dragger in the background.

The Sixties

The US was firmly in the grip of the hysteria of the Cold War and apocalyptical fear gripped the pen of the author of the article on EMC in the New Englander, a general-interest publication. In the October 1963 edition it carried an ominous article on EMC, likening the problem of RF Interference to that unveiled in Rachel Carson’s book of that time on the environment: Silent Spring. The bent of the article was that the uncontrolled growth in radio frequency emissions was going to leave the spectrum a hostile and toxic place. There are some amusing snippets in the piece, including likening RF propagation to nuclear ‘fissing’, to wit:

“…when the static energy travels and snowballs, picking up more energy and gathering strength as it goes, ending up miles from its original source, that can be dangerous…” Hmmm.

And “Another Silent Spring may be in the making.” Yikes! The article goes on its exposé of the various levels of interest, ignorance and denial that are the human condition, and again, the more things change..“ As a result of man’s inventiveness and passion for miniaturization, products emitting electrical energy have been made even smaller and smaller–and packed closer to other sources of spurious emission”

and finally, a time-proved statement:

“The FCC staff is overworked and understaffed.”

In the fine but faulty rhetoric of the Post-McCarthyera, it speaks of “an EMC-riddled atmosphere.”

If that were true, we’d all be looking for jobs. Too much EMC? Let us pray not!  But smug observations aside, it’s an interesting read, for sure, and talks about the origins of the Electromagnetic Compatibility Analysis Center (ECAC) in Annapolis. One interesting paragraph harkens to the early formation of the EMC Society. “…in 1957 the Professional Group on Radio Frequency Interference of the Institute of Radio Engineering was formed and has now changed its name to the Professional Technical Group on Electromagnetic Compatibility (PTGEMC) in order to include the entire interference field.”

The Seventies

But before we advance to the present, we have to pay homage to one more decade. Tripping along through the sixties we welcomed the engineering community to the summer of Love and and the Groovy EMC Society with the “1970 International Symposium on EMC”. That is some Aquarius cool, the Expanding Science of EMC. WOW! Let’s jump in the hot tub, celebrate the next few decades of discovery (and hope there’s no leakage current). Aha! Another click of the Rubik’s Cube. We can’t be far-off…

Engineers in bell-bottoms.

Far out!

Our Plutarch remained steady at his task and muttered quietly, reading off the names of the Founders and followers of the EMCS,lost in a certain reverie as he scanned minutes of years of meetings and various correspondences, reading the names:

Fisher, O’Neill, Nichols, Kesselman, White,Showers, Heirman, Schlicke, so many others.

We must be close to finding the Keystone.

Meanwhile, I had the good fortune to sift through some of the collection: correspondence, professional and semi-personal collections of articles, standards and publications.

The first ANSI C95.1 was about five pages long. Ten milliwatts per cm squared.

Curiously, a letter written to a young Mr. Thomas slipped from a manila folder and floated to the floor. Dated March 18, 1949 on Bell Telephone Laboratories letterhead, carefully typed on a Remington or Smith-Corona Manual, it read, in part. (Iimagine Leonard ’s thrill: Ah, publication!).

“Dear Mr. Thomas, I am glad to inform you that your paper “Interference Reduction” has been accepted for presentation at a meeting sponsored by Commission 4 of the URS in Washington on May 2-3. You will be informed of detailed arrangements later.”

Interference? Back in 1949? The transistor was still in swaddling clothes! But, I am reminded: The more things change, &c. And as to the pursuit of the paper: “Interference Reduction”, truthfully, I am not unhappy that Mr. Thomas’ paper did not reduce all of the interference, for, lo it is often a lonely and painful pursuit, were it not for interference, we would not be slabbing words on a page for Ms. O’Neil’s journal.

List Ho!?

At this point, our time was running out and we hadn’t found what we were looking forand the effects of the morning’s coffee had worn off. We decided to stop after one more box and leave the rest to another time when fortuitously a folder with title: “EMC History” was pulled from the fourth box.Dan’s hands trembled as his eyes fell to handwritten sign-in sheets and finally, perhaps, the Grail itself–a transcribed list of names on graph paper.

“I think we may have it,” Dan said, his laconic mid-western manner thinly and insufficiently covering his excitement. “I’ll write this down and see if our members recognize these names.”

Buoyed, but cautious, we re-sealed the tomb and left, vowing to return and sift through the archives once more, should our mission not be complete.

Dan made his plane.

Thanks again Mr. Thomas.

Epilogue

Well, is it the list? Dan, what did you find?

Bibliography

The Leonard Thomas Archives. 1940s-2006

The New Englander. The New England Council for Economic Development. October 1963.

MCBC Steps Out: IBEC Gateway September 2008

MCBC Steps Out

International Business Exchange Council & Invest Hong Kong

Hong Kong: Adventure Beats Money

But Making Money Makes the Adventure Better

By Mike Violette

You have packed only what you can sling over your shoulders, gathered your bags and received godspeeds from and said your awkward good-byes to your family and friends. You jump the train as the sun sets over a harried London rail-yard. Your loved ones wave in the distance as the train gathers speed and rattles rhythms clacked on the tracks running south towards the Channel and the boat that will take your fresh dreams to the Continent and to…who knows? Alighting there, whatever vessel conveys you towards your final destination is adequate and happily accepted, because the pounds and francs and marks are few and conserved like a breath on the moon. A warm, dream-filled night is savored gratefully as the roll of the road rocks away the doubt from a million miles away. Watching the rise of the sun and the view from the window of a creaking lorry, the question of not “why?” but “where?” pounds its insistent query against your aching temples. You know it was time roam the orb; but where to stop?

Eighteen months later, in roundabout fashion through France, Czechoslovakia, Albania, a hop-scotch by air across India—because the roads are only lines on paper, not real things—through Afghanistan of relatively simpler times, through Cambodia, skirting Vietnam because it’s way too hot there in 1972 and up and down the thickly-forested Peninsula of Malaysia, all beautiful in their way, all waypoints to your final destination: the bustling and inimitable city of Hong Kong. Here is where your wake stops, crashing against the shores of the nine dragons.

And if you knew where you’d be thirty-five years on, would you still make the first step? Only you can answer this.

Flash-forward to Tysons Corner in the aluminum and glass edifice of the Capital One building and you’re addressing the gathering of dark suits and business dress. It’s a late-summer early fall day, the kind that Washingtonians stay in Washington to savor a few dozen times a year. You are greeted with smiles upon your arrival. A welcome sight.

Kelly, Amanda, Lisa and Jackie

(Note: the words and recreations of this missive are entirely the fault of the author, who blames them on a sugar high from one too many glazed donuts served at the meeting).

The Assembled have arrived from Northern Virginia, Suburban Maryland and the District to the IBEC Global Business Series featuring Hong Kong’s Solutions for Success in China. They have come to hear Mike Rowse. He has the gravitas of starting and running Invest Hong Kong and has a few words to say about why Hong Kong is a compelling center for business in China (and Asia).

Kevin Reynolds, President of Cardinal Bank and Chairman of the Fairfax County Chamber opens the session and introduces Kelly Jones of Invest Hong Kong, who provides some background on Mike’s storied career.

Kevin Opens the Session Kelly Introduces the Moderator

Saying thank-yous and words of gratitude to the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce, its many sponsors, found here: IBEC Sponsors, Mike begins his measured message:

Mike addresses the IBEC Gathering. Dan and John listen intently.

First a little history: China’s lurch to modern ‘capitalism’ began earnestly in 1976. That year, two founders of Communist China’s government, Mao Zedong and Chou Enlai passed to their divine reward, joining Joe and Karl and the rest of their ilk. The new phase of China’s assent began with Hua Guofeng’s advocacy of the re-re-habilitated Deng Xiaoping. Brushing aside the chaos and confusion that marked the end of the Cultural Revolution and the various purges, condemnations, party infighting and other un-delectable artifacts of Mao’s passing, Deng realized that the way to modernize China was to choose another course of action. Central planning, or, rather control, was fine (and suited to China’s history), but market forces needed to be injected into a moribund and backwards country. The rest, as they say, is history.

Deng invoked a Sichuan proverb and is oft-quoted, “No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat.” The new cat that he unleashed took the best ideas to make the country strong, starting with experiments in managed capitalism in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the southern part of China.

These zones enjoyed special exemptions and freedoms from the central government control. Deng likes cats

The first SEZ, in Shenzhen, which in 1979 was a sleepy fishing village across the water from Hong Kong, ignited a fit of success that has resulted in stored like this now offering Gucci and Coach and Rolex on the streets of Beijing (the real McCoy, too).

Through measured steps, managing the transition of Hong Kong back to the British, China maintained a steady focus on the future of Hong Kong and recognized its importance in transitioning to “One Country-Two Systems.” The same was done with Macau (the first and last European Colony), which was ceded to the Portuguese and returned to China in 1999.

So, in all this froth—the end-result which businesses can now enjoy—is a Hong Kong that offers the following benefits for organizations that want to make money in China:

1. A strong local market of 7 million people with a per capita GDP of $30K. Twenty million visitors per year. Shopping! Tailored suits! Disneyland!
2. Coordination center for China for sourcing from China.
3. Springboard for WOFE formation in China. Having a HK company own a WOFE in the PRC gives certain tangible benefits and protections as corporate transactions are performed under HK rule.
4. Hong Kong is the center of East Asia and is an entry point for the region.

Mike is followed by fellow Hong Kong-philes Daniel Booth, VP of ISC Trust and John Simon of Crown Relocations.

Daniel Booth weighed in on the legal system. Hong Kong’s system is based on British law, naturally enough, and the Chinese recognized that there was no way to scrap this and implant Chinese law when they reassumed sovereignty over the area. First, the system was working well for a century or more. Second, the Chinese legal system was (is) still in its infancy. Third, the Chinese recognize that Hong Kong provides bedrock for business foundation seeking to develop China as a market and as a sourcing partner.

In addition to a sound legal basis, Hong Kong offers the benefit of an established international arbitration system. The benefits of owning a Chinese venture through a Hong Kong holding company is that the proxy gains protections from the vagaries of Chinese law, a necessary buffer if things get nasty and product liability issues arise.

Intellectual Property issues, unlike in mother PRC, are consistently enforceable. For example, if fake products are being transshipped through Hong Kong to or from China, the legal system provides a mechanism to stop and seize the goods at the port.

Taxes! The corporate tax rates are a maximum of 16.5%. Individual taxes cap at 15%. No capital gains taxes, no withholding, no VAT or sales tax, either. No tax on dividends. It’s nice to be a free-market capitalist, unless you’re running the show at Lehman Bros.

Finally, the financial infrastructure (banking) is sound and transparent. Considering HSBC (Hong Kong-Shanghai Banking Corporation) is one of IBEC’s key sponsors, have a chat with Jeff Henry, here with Leigh Basha of Holland+Knight, another valued IBEC sponsor.

Jeff and Leigh are Bullish on Hong Kong

Finally, the session wraps with John Simon of Crown Relocations. John’s specialization is helping companies and their employees land softly and minimize the thud when becoming expatriates. Some of the considerations to bring to the issue of exporting employees are:

1. Localization (cultural and familiarity)
2. Schooling
3. Navigating the bureaucracy

It is an expensive proposition to place employees in another country. Often, the complications of doing so are left towards the end of the process of establishing a presence in a country. With the significant expense of transitioning someone to start or join an organization in a foreign land, it is critical that the employee is engaged for an extended period of time, not bailing out after a three month stint because the kids’ school is not adequate.

John is joined by Peter Gourlay of the Maryland-Asia Environmental Partnership and Kim Weir with Research on Investment.

Peter, Kim and John

Your eyes open and you stare up at the dim bare bulb in the two dollar-a-night room you’ve booked in Bangkok. You’re alone again. The flight to Hong Kong leaves in five hours. The sheets are hot and sweaty and you pull them over your head…All those suits, maybe it was just a bad dream.

What is shared at a gathering of the International Business Exchange Council? Well, one has to read between the lines—just a little.

Mike Violette September 2008

Independent Laboratories and a Test of the Public Confidence

Independent Laboratories and a Test of the Public Confidence

July 9, 2008

Michael Violette, P.E.

Director, American Council of Independent Laboratories

 ‘Never refuse a breath mint’, someone advised me a long time ago. And speaking of breath mints, here are some newly-imported spearmint beauties: they really sparkle. Did you put one of these in your mouth while you put your cell phone to your head? Did your drooly infant nephew get some nifty, shiny chewy toys for his birthday? How about that imported pesto that you spread on your pasta, delicious, right? Safe? Probably—for the most part. Why make this assumption? Well, by and large most products are tested and regulated to some degree, and most are quite safe; after all—we’re not dropping dead in the streets. So, by and large, that cell phone for which you spend $200 a month is probably compliant with the electromagnetic radiation hazard protection measures specified by the US government. Right?

 

But who says? How can a consumer know that a product is safe? Well there really is no way to tell without having it tested formally; and most regulated products are tested at some time—usually once per model or per batch. But what do you know about the labs that do this testing? You’ve probably heard of the some of the big ones; maybe you thought that they were somehow part of a big benevolent government agency charged with protecting the public interest. Nah. Most products on the market in the United States are evaluated by the one of the hundreds of private for-profit laboratories operating in the United States. And for many of them, oversight is performed by an “accreditor” who reviews the operation once a year for a day or a week.  While we’ll never return to the horrors documented one hundred years ago by Upton Sinclair, much of the public puts its faith in the network of cost-conscious and competitive “Indie Labs”, many of whom are held by a family whose current owner or founder is a recovering technologist of some sort (engineer, chemist, physician or technician). A large part of this large sector is dominated by the labs that are owned by multinational corporations (the biggest of the big are based in England, France and Germany, by the way).

 

For the US market, penalties for malfeasance on the part of a laboratory keep most of them toeing the line: loss of customers, loss of reputation, loss of accreditation, and dreaded lawsuits, so lab processes are fairly rigorous and test results traceable, repeatable and responsible. The business of staying in business keeps most laboratory operators keen to keep their processes and data valid and able to withstand challenges, should it come to that.

 

But did you know that for many product sectors, much of the testing is performed overseas? The next time you visit one of the big-box or mark-down chain outlets, look at the labels on the products on the shelves. The country of origin must be etched into the label of most consumer products. And as the sources of these products move, so does the test infrastructure. The natural progression for a developing world is evolve from cheap resources to cheap manufacturing to outsourced manufacturing to design to research and, ultimately in-country testing. As a country’s level of sophistication rises, so does the transformation from simple economic advantage (read: cheap labor) to creative advantage (read: intellectual property).

 

What is happening in Asia interesting because the entire maturation process has occurred over the last 20 years (remarkable!). Many highly-sophisticated products are being developed by local designers and assembled from locally-manufactured parts. Whereas outsourcing in years-past came from a US-based corporation (appliance, entertainment, IT manufacturers) and the supply chain was overseen from a stateside locale (with LOTS of audit and quality visits to the foreign manufacturer), in today’s market control has been ceded to the purchasing managers in the distribution chain. The news about lead in toys and antifreeze in toothpaste and melamine in dog food speaks as much to a global market as it does to a blurrying of the sources of the supply of product constituents. Visit China or Vietnam and go to the “plumbing street” or “wiring street” or “concrete sculpture street” and witness the overlap of what must be supply syndicates operating under God-knows-what kind of operating structure. How can a manufacturer assure that the flavor additive they specified for the breath mint is the same L-carvone they saw in the local producer, rather than from the inventory from the factory run by his wife’s cousin? It’s not easy.

 

Independent Test Laboratories hold part of the solution to this puzzle as proper testing and routine monitoring of goods is a proper first step. Testing follows the product development; products are being tested in foreign labs—at least by labs operated in foreign countries. The question is: how are the laboratories in the developing country faring? The short answer is: Mixed. Obviously, some products are getting to market with some marked deficiencies or outright hazards. And many of these products are faulty after they’ve been approved, which means that someone was incompetent—or cheating. In some sectors it is simply a matter of hitting a public website to find out information on the product: who made it, who tested it, who certified it, etc. It’s a matter of trust that the overseers are doing their job and that the certifiers are handling the complexities of product certification with sufficient competence and integrity.

 

For example, sufficient confidence in the processes in the US and Europe has led to “Mutual Recognition Agreements” which establish protocols for ensuring test laboratory competence and comparable accreditation processes. However, for the other half of the world, these agreements don’t exist (there are lots of trade, political and other reasons for this). In the electronics sector, from which a majority of the devices are sourced from Asia, with the exception of Singapore and Taiwan, there are no such agreements in place between the US and Asian countries. Hence, devices manufactured in the large producing countries are tested and may be labeled and shipped outside a system that the US public believes is there to protect consumers.

 

The other part of the solution is effective and balanced government enforcement. While we have built a system of product evaluations based on accreditation, good practice and it is up to the government to have effective enforcement of not only the manufacturers’ adherence to the requirements, but effective oversight of the conformity assessment process.

 

Finally, at what level should the US public be concerned about this? That is a question that bears some additional examination. But first, care for a breath mint?

Mike Violette

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