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50 SMT007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2021 Look at the IPC APEX EXPO 2021 website and you will see every aspect of PCBA manu- facturing being covered by an industry expert. Review your process and see where you could make improvements, and then sign up for a related class. Everyone knows that it is quicker and cheaper to learn from someone else's expe- rience, and a conference like this is full of peo- ple who have experience with failure. at is a very valuable resource because they tend to write papers about what happened and how they fixed it. ere is no shortage of material combina- tions when you consider all the options, but in general, I would say the vast majority are pull- ing from a smaller pool. at increases the like- lihood that someone will be discussing some way to improve your current process and quite possibly without adding any cost (outside the registration fee). is all speaks to the topic of reliability because with all the transferrable knowledge available you can take something you learn, apply it to your process, and see immediate results. It might not be some gigan- tic revelation that saves the product, but even minor tweaks to a process that is currently acceptable can further improve reliability— even for your product that "hasn't ever had a problem," but especially for those that "have always done it this way" and don't see the fail- ure coming. At the risk of sounding like a commercial for IPC, I just wanted to highlight some of the seminars I see as having tremendous poten- tial for value. Keep in mind the differences between Professional Development courses and Technical Conference Sessions, and how each are beneficial. Professional Development ese courses are very in-depth, and last three to six hours. ey are presented by well- known experts on the topic at hand and offer experience you never had an opportunity with. ere are also options within the PD courses based on your level of experience. Some of these range from a thorough explanation of some of the basics of manufacturing up to the advanced level with detailed content and high- level discussion. Technical Sessions e tech sessions will normally have three speakers addressing the same topic from dif- ferent angles. ey don't always go in depth, like the PD courses do, but there is almost always an opportunity aer the sessions to communicate directly with the author for more information. In fact, this year there will still be live Q&A for all tech sessions. is gives you the chance to ask questions in real time with the presenter instead of trying to remember everything and follow up from an on-demand webinar situation. e schedule is packed so you will need to schedule your time wisely to take in everything you would like to. e "hallways" between session rooms are a lot shorter this year so it will be easier to go from one to the next. Based on what we see here in the lab, I would suggest PD courses that look at assembly challenges with bottom- terminated components, or BTCs. Even aer about a decade we see many assembly issues related to BTCs. If you look for presentations on these components you're likely to find just about as many as you would have found on transitioning to lead-free a week before July 2006. On the other side of the assembly coin is a class on the topic of design for reliability. I have oen thought that every designer should have hands on experience with assembling the hardware. When designers and assemblers work together with shared experience there should be fewer assembly challenges, which One good thing about data is it stays the same no matter how it is presented.