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38 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2020 strong member companies to participate in standards committees globally. In 2015, we had no members in China on standards devel- opment committees. We had about 200 people in China working only on translations. Forward to this year, and we continued to grow our translation capability up until last year. But then we started to develop a strong cadre of development participants on IPC stan- dards. We now have over 320 company mem- bers on standards development committees from China, helping to develop the next gener- ation of standards. And translations are driven by special customized software. Matties: That makes a big difference. Carmichael: That is a huge engagement, and it's a commitment by member companies to allow one of their employees to spend their time working on the next-generation stan- dard. Over that period of time, we also helped educate Chinese companies about standards. Before, many people originally thought that if you went with one standard, you were support- ing one company (think beta/VHS); now, they understand that standards are a common lan- guage to communicate to your supply chain. And the supply chain has become more global, even across China. Maybe you make components in Shenzhen, they get sent to Chongqing for partial assembly, and then they get final assembled somewhere else. That sup- ply chain needs to have a common language, and IPC provides that for our industry. The standards development in China has had con- tinued success because companies are coming deeper into the IPC process. As I said, we're probably now closing in on 10% of the devel- opment personnel writing the next generation of global IPC standards. Talking about translation, it used to take us almost a year from the beginning of writing a new standard to when we translated training material for it. You release a new version of 610, and a year later we could have that in Chinese with training material. We felt that was way too slow, so we started doing translation our- selves. That sped things up and took about six months out of the process. At the same time, two years ago, we started using a software tool to develop a database for IPC language in Chi- nese. That's a very intensive and expensive upfront process. We invested in that for our member companies. When the next generation of 610 comes out, which is next year, we'll be able to go from the release of the standard to Chinese training material in under/about three weeks. That's a huge improvement and a mat- ter of supporting the people. We've also talked before about 1401, which was the first standard that was initiated in China a couple of years ago. It's about how to meet the EU standards for corporate social responsibility for mid-size companies. As of today, in the development process in IPC, globally, there are now six standards in the process that have originated in China, includ- ing a social responsibility and green manu- facturing program in addition to some more traditional manufacturing standards. We've made a lot of progress, and China is playing a much stronger role, as they should, in the next generation of standards development. Being local and engaging further with people in the standards development side have been the two things that have helped maintain our growth. Matties: There has been a big shift in China around environmental impacts, and you've had a firsthand view of that attitude shifting. What can you share about that? Carmichael: The fact that the government is fully supportive of this is why it's working We now have over 320 company members on standards development committees from China, helping to develop the next generation of standards.