Zhao Dong, president and CEO of Xiamen Airlines (center), Huang Guoliang, director of quality management for the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (right), and William Troy, CEO of the American Society for Quality during the first China-US Quality Summit convenes in Seattle on Monday. [Photo/Chinadaily.com.cn]

The first China-US Quality Summit convened in Seattle on Monday, bringing together quality experts, senior leaders and government officials from more than 50 Chinese, US and other multinational organizations across various industries.

Themed "New Vision of Quality in the Digital Era", the summit is part of the Global Summit on Quality hosted by the American Society for Quality (ASQ) during the 2018 World Conference on Quality and Improvement held on April 30-May 2.

Zhao Dong, president and CEO of Xiamen Airlines, delivered a speech titled "Chinese Style Advancement and Innovations in Aviation Services" and shared how the company has contributed to world civil aviation.

Xiamen Airlines, the only airline that won the China Quality Award, the highest honor in the quality community in the country, is widely recognized by its "zero tolerance" of potential safety hazards.

On Feb 18, 2010, the left engine of a Xiamen Airlines 737NG aircraft flying from Hangzhou to Shanghai shut down. The cause was the sudden failure of the hydraulic management unit, a core component of an aircraft engine.

After being notified by its producers GE and Honeywell that the incident could not be prevented or effectively monitored beforehand, the airline strove to make technical breakthroughs by itself.

It took Xiamen Airlines three months to develop an HMU monitoring system, according to Zhao, sharing the story with the conference attendees.

Later, it shared the monitoring system with GE and Honeywell and GE has since applied the system to its customers worldwide.

In the meantime, the company's president shared his vision: “We would like to establish an air bridge for cultural exchanges between China and the West," said Zhao, adding that the company will devote more efforts to promoting sustainable development as well as building a community with a shared future for humanity.

Xiamen Airlines is the first airline in the world to cooperate with the UN on promoting the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, and its Flight MF8116 is the world's first aircraft bearing the SDGs livery.

He also called on Chinese and US businesses to expand consensus, strengthen cooperation with an open and inclusive mindset so as to achieve mutually beneficial prosperity in the digital era.

The World Conference on Quality and Improvement is the largest and most influential global meeting on quality since its inception in 1947.

The China-U.S. Quality Summit, the first to be held, served as a platform for the exchange of information between China and US quality professionals and sent a clear signal regarding China's willingness to cooperate with global partners.