Recently, International Graphene Product Certificate Center (IGCC) carried out the factory inspection in AIKA Innovative Technology Co., Ltd. (AIKA Tech, stock code: 838385). The IGCC audit group conducted the evaluation of establishment and implementation of quality system and product consistency on Sep 7th and Sep 12th, respectively. Dr. Werner Bergholz, IGCC technical committee, Germany certification expert, was nominated to be the head of this audit group. After this audit, AIKA Tech could be the first enterprise that obtained IGCC product certificate on graphene applications.
After received the demand of certification service on AIKA Tech’s “Low-voltage graphene materials based infrared radiant heating fabric”, IGCC, as a third-party certification body, firstly send personnel to take a random sample of products from AIKA Tech. The type-testing was carried out by China National Supervision and Test Center for Infrared and Industry Galvanothermy Product Quality (Wuhan Product Quality Supervision and Test Institute, WHQT). When the results meets the requirements of related IGCC standards, IGCC sent out an audit group to evaluate the implementation of quality system and product consistency of AIKA Tech. Only after these rigorous steps, the certificate could be issued. Moreover, after the issue of certificate, IGCC will also regularly carry out Follow up Inspection to confirm the validity of certificate.
IGCC, officially established on Jan 18, 2018, is a global independent third-party certification organization founded by China Innovation Alliance of the Graphene Industry (CGIA), Phantoms Foundation, a renown graphene platform based in Europe, as well as some other relevant organizations. IGCC relies on the advantages of various graphene industry platforms around the world, adopts advanced standards as the certification standard, integrates top-level testing resources, to provide professional, high-quality, and package solution of certification services to customers around the world, maintaining a contractual spirit for the industry and building a trusted platform for the market and decision-makers. Facing the market's numerous graphene products that are difficult to distinguish, IGCC holds a third-party voluntary product certification method to purify the market environment and accelerate the industrialization of graphene industry. Dr. Werner Bergholz, head of audit group, worked as quality manager in giant firms such as Siemens for over 30 years, in the meantime, he is also acting as professor in Jacob University and teaching Quality Management, Statistical Tools and other courses related to quality control. He is one of the world’s best experts who combined the theory with practice in this field. Dr. Bergholz recommended the SPC method to AIKA Tech after a detailed understanding of the operation of the factory quality system. As a quality control method widely used in the electrical and electronic industry, the SPC method should be introduced into the graphene product manufacturing enterprise as soon as possible. In this method, the quality manager only have to fill some simple forms, which enables the company to have a quantitative grasp of the process stability, and also enables the company to better understand the role of each process parameter in the final product quality.
In addition, for the manufacturer of graphene end products such as AIKA Tech, Dr. Bergholz also pointed out how to trace the customer and market parameters of the end products step by step till the requirements on graphene raw material powder or slurry, which should be proposed to the raw material supplier. This shall be the key to distinguishing companies like AIKA Tech from their peers. At the same time, end products should also be traceable back to graphene material and other key raw material components. Only by doing a complete trace and verifying that the various processes do not destroy the structure and properties of the graphene material, one could prove their product is a true graphene product.
Finally, the audit group also proposed to AIKA Teck to strengthen their intellectual property management. As an emerging field, the war on sales of graphene product is a war on intellectual property rights, and also on standards. Only by firmly occupying the commanding heights of intellectual property rights and pushing relevant advanced technologies forming standards, can one take the lead in the industry and the market.
