Master of safety checks

A Japanese technical adviser won the top honor for foreigners for improving the efficiency of China's oil production equipment. Yao Ying reports. Yao Ying

"Making profits is important, but production safety should always come first ... It is very important to train machine operators so that they can detect problems and deal with them on the spot."

This is the mantra of Hiroshi Sano, a Japanese technical adviser working for Sinopec Maoming Petrochemical Company, one of China's biggest oil refineries. Sano is a typical "company man", having worked for Idemitsu Kosan Co Ltd, a leading Japanese petroleum company, for 42 years before retiring in 2012. He joined Sinopec Maoming in June the next year.