A Salute to Process Engineers

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It seems very appropriate, coming on the heels of IPC APEX EXPO 2016, that the focus of our April issue is process engineering. I believe process engineers (and process engineer types) are the worker bees of IPC (and obviously of the companies they work for). If they don’t actually write the standards and specifications or present the technical papers, they most certainly are doing the work behind the scenes—running tests, gathering data, coming up with new ideas, developing new products, making existing products work better, and so forth.

The interesting thing about process engineering in our industry is that you don’t have to be a degreed engineer. You just have to be willing to take on the problem solving and troubleshooting that is involved in making things work—in this case, the PCB shop and its product. No easy task, believe me (I’ve been there), but the intrigue and the never-ending variety of problems, often brought on by the increasing complexity of PCBs, is probably what lured all of us in in the first place and keeps the job interesting and challenging—and makes it tough to leave. How many people do you know who have left the industry and found themselves drawn back in?

Getting back to the recent IPC conference and show, it was and is quite an event, as those in attendance can tell you. Between myriad subcommittee meetings, keynotes, a couple dozen technical paper sessions and the exhibition, one finds too much to do and way too little time to do it—and this year we had a lot of ground to cover. We certainly got plenty of walking in at the Las Vegas Convention Center; some people reached their 10,000 steps by noon!

In the meantime, though, there were more exhibitors than ever (though the PCB corner seemed smaller than ever) and there were many very interesting technical sessions where attendance was SRO. We hope to bring you some of those presentations in future issues of The PCB Magazine. The conference had special meaning to me, as I was inducted into IPC’s Hall of Fame at the Tuesday luncheon, a huge honor and one I am still trying to believe really happened. I am now an IPC Ambassador!

Read the full article here.

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the April 2016 issue of The PCB Magazine.

03/21/2023 | Christopher Bonsell, Chemcut

This year, I had the great opportunity to come to IPC APEX EXPO in San Diego as a contributing member in Chemcut’s booth. Being an exhibitor is always interesting because you never know what you will learn or who you will meet. Truly, it seems that every IPC APEX EXPO is an eye-opening experience. This was the second show I attended, and last year I was amazed to see how in-depth and interconnected the electronics industry is. Seeing how many different companies contribute to manufacturing today’s core technology never fails to impress me.

03/21/2023 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007

Investments, staffing, cybersecurity, and a peek into his crystal ball—John Vaughan, vice president of strategic markets at Summit Interconnect, sits down with Nolan Johnson to talk about it all. Business is good, by the way, thanks to Summit’s portfolio of military contracts, and he has sound advice to offer for smaller shops in the United States, and their real ability to make a difference in PCB fabrication.

03/21/2023 | Dan Beaulieu, D.B. Management Group

I have always felt that automation has the potential to make a big difference in our PCB industry, especially domestically, where labor is at premium. For the past year, I have been looking for the story of how automation can and will make a significant difference in established PCB shops. I was fortunate enough to find that story in Multicircuits, located in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Only a few short years ago, this company was considered a “plain vanilla” PCB fabricator holding its own in our industry; now it has suddenly assumed a true leadership position in the industry in terms of capability, technology, operations, and profitability.