Thirty years from rooting to flourishing, Agilent China's customer cooperation highlights moments

Thirty years ago, Agilent officially launched its local manufacturing layout in Pudong; Thirty years later, this land has grown a complete innovation ecosystem covering research and development, intelligent manufacturing, and services. Starting from a gas chromatography production line, to Shanghai and Hangzhou's "smart manufacturing dual engine" driving the world, we have not only gone through the path of capacity expansion and technological upgrading, but also the continuous deepening of the practice of "rooting in China and empowering the local".

True growth lies not only in our implementation of large-scale manufacturing, but also in whether we truly integrate into the innovation chain of our customers - whether we face challenges that are only known on site, whether we move from product delivery to exploring side by side, and whether we move from responding to demand to common definition.

Today, Agilent's role has long changed: it is no longer just a device provider, but a joint definer and ecological builder. We collaborate with clients in standard setting, co create in joint laboratories, and work in the forefront of scientific research. These systematic and in-depth value co creation are pushing Agilent from local manufacturing to local creation, and influencing global innovation with Chinese practice.

For thirty years, Agilent has been closely collaborating with authoritative research institutions in China, assisting cooperative units in promoting technological iteration of national regulations and standards in multiple fields such as food, environment, materials, and medicine. At the same time, it has helped Chinese laboratories move towards the international stage, providing solid support for building a scientific, rigorous, and reliable standard testing system.

In the field of domestic standard construction, such as the development of food pesticide residue detection methods, Agilent has cooperated with the Environmental Protection Research and Monitoring Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs to assist in the formulation and revision of various pesticide residue detection standards in plant-based food matrices, continuously improving the applicability and coverage of detection methods; Collaborate with the Institute of Agricultural Quality Standards and Testing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences to assist in the development of standard methods for detecting pesticide residues in animal derived foods; Cooperate with the Agricultural Product Safety Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Quality Inspection and Testing Sciences to support the development of high-throughput pesticide residue screening methods and standard methods. Through multidimensional cooperation, we aim to help build a food safety testing technology system and serve national food safety supervision.

For example, in the development of new pollutant detection methods, Agilent supports multiple research institutions in developing and revising PFAS and new pollutant detection standards for food, conducting screening for new pollutants in the environment and food, supporting the development of environmental detection standards and methods for typical new pollutants such as PFAS, antibiotics, and flame retardants, and helping to promote national new pollution control and environmental quality development.

In the field of international standards and international proficiency testing, Agilent continues to support Chinese users in participating in the development of international standard methods such as AOAC, ISO, ASTM, etc; By relying on cooperative methods and processes, we support Chinese users to participate in multiple international proficiency testing projects and achieve satisfactory results, demonstrating the international credibility of China's testing technology.

These collaborations demonstrate Agilent's proactive response to local demand and its long-term commitment to aligning Chinese testing technology with international standards, providing solid technical support for safeguarding food safety, improving environmental quality, and ensuring public health.

Innovation is not born in a vacuum, but in the collision of real needs. Agilent collaborates with clients to establish joint laboratories in various fields such as environment, food, materials, life sciences, and pharmaceuticals. These laboratories are not exhibition halls, but rather "incubators" for technology implementation and "sources" for industry transformation.

Through this model, we share technology platforms and domain expertise with our clients, and collaborate around common challenges in industrial upgrading. Joint laboratories are becoming an important carrier for promoting technology implementation and driving industry standards in fields such as environmental monitoring, food testing, materials science, life and health, and intelligent manufacturing. It signifies that our role has shifted from being a device provider to an innovative partner walking alongside our customers.

Innovation begins with ideas and grows through collaboration. Agilent always believes that customers are the most important source of innovation driving technological progress. In China, Agilent continues to support top research talents through two major programs: the "Agilent Research Catalyst" and the "Applications and Core Technologies - University Research (ACT-UR)" awards, helping to advance cutting-edge exploration and produce high-level results.

Up to now, seven Chinese scientists have won the Thought Leader Award, and since 2020, over 40 outstanding researchers have also received support from the Agilent ACT-UR project, covering key areas such as omics and life sciences, drug discovery, biopharmaceuticals, synthetic biology, environmental health, and new materials.

These collaborations are not only financial support, but also ecological co construction - we not only collaborate deeply with scientists around specific topics, but also strive to build cross institutional and cross disciplinary cooperation networks, promote industry university research linkage, and amplify innovation radiation effects.

In the future, Agilent will continue to focus on hot areas such as advanced materials, biomanufacturing, PFAS, new pollutants, and innovative drugs, support cutting-edge research, promote the development of laboratory digitization, and work together with research leaders to build a sustainable innovation community.

For thirty years, Agilent has been committed to transforming cutting-edge technology into actual productivity for its customers. Whether accelerating new drug development, ensuring food safety, improving environmental quality, or promoting innovation in new materials, our instruments, software, and automation solutions are widely used in key scenarios across various fields in China.

In the pharmaceutical industry, Agilent Infinity III intelligent liquid phase system has helped Simcere Pharmaceutical and Wanhan Pharmaceutical achieve a leap in analysis efficiency; In the process of long-term cooperation, Xinlitai Pharmaceutical has firmly completed the upgrade from Agilent bronze medal to silver medal service - this is not only a change in contract terms, but also a pharmaceutical company's emphasis on service value; The innovative function of Agilent NovoCyte Opteon spectral flow cytometer perfectly meets its needs in the two frontier research fields of mitochondria and exosomes. Shiji Biotech from Taiwan, China, China, has become the first user in Greater China and even the world to order this new product.

Behind these cases is Agilent's deep understanding of customer pain points - from manual operation to automatic operation, from single point detection to system integration, we continuously optimize workflows to truly serve people with technology. It is through such repeated battles with users that instruments have temperature and innovation has echoes.

Even the most advanced technology must cross the 'last mile' from device to application. The value of Agilent lies not only in providing high-performance instruments, but also in working hand in hand with customers to truly transform technology into productivity for solving practical problems.

We collaborate with Wuhan Maiwei Metabolism to use autoSIM software to automatically create SIM methods, significantly improving the efficiency and accuracy of metabolite screening and quantitative analysis; Exploring digital evaluation of tea quality in collaboration with Zhejiang Yangsheng Tang, establishing quantifiable quality standards for traditional agricultural products based on fingerprint similarity algorithm.

In Shenzhen, our cooperation with the Advanced Institute started with the "Thought Leader" project and gradually developed into a deep integration of synthetic biology facility platforms. Multiple Agilent devices have been integrated into automated workflows to support cutting-edge life science research. Starting from July 2023, the collaboration on automation of the advanced synthetic biology facility platform was initiated. Within a year, the Agilent China Laboratory Productivity Innovation Center team, along with researchers and their teams from the advanced institute, completed the construction of the automation platform. At present, the synthetic biology platform of Shenzhen Advanced Institute has successfully integrated multiple Agilent devices, including Bravo, Rapidfire MS, BioTek 406 LS washing machine, BioTek Synergy H1, and BioTeck MultiFlo FX multifunctional liquid separator.

In Shenzhen, we are working together with Zhiweitong, leveraging its expertise in continuous flow processes and our instrument and automation capabilities, to create a full process solution from reaction design to result analysis, in response to the trend of pharmaceutical and chemical industries transitioning towards efficient and safe processes.

These collaborations confirm a concept: true innovation starts with devices and ends with applications. Only when technology is rooted in real-life scenarios can it unleash its maximum value.

Epilogue: Thirty years together, the closest distance

Thirty years, from manufacturing to creation, from following to peers. The story of Agilent and China is no longer a one-way technological input, but a long-term co creation that goes both ways. In the future, we look forward to more collaborations like this - not pursuing grand narratives, but striving to leave a solid mark in every laboratory, every test, and every research. Bloom is never the end; Growing together with users is the meaning of rooting.