Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/819981
20 The PCB Magazine • May 2017 Goldman: Do you find them useful at all? Bigelow: For new employees, they of- ten are good to show that we're not alone in how we do things. The ba- sic processes have not really changed. Many things have changed in those processes, but you're still following a process link through. When you hire someone to be a plater, you still want them to see the entire manufacturing process. You might not be able to take the time to walk them through your plant and watch a job go through, but you can pull a vid - eo out, even if it's a very introductory video. But you still need to have a more in-depth training. Goldman: A video on etching shows you how to run the etcher, or shows you that this is etching, but it doesn't really show you how to control the etcher parameters for a particular job. Bigelow: Correct, and everyone controls things differently. Everyone needs to control things. It's important to know that you need to do that. Now, you've got to go back into your own com- pany's recipe book and say, "Follow our proce- dures." Because every company does it a little bit differently, and every job is a little bit differ- ent, but it's a good overview of the industry and how things go together. We also have had many conversations about what happens to product once it leaves our building as we're not an assembler—especial- ly when dealing with thermal shocks. A circuit board is going to go through a lot of thermal shocks between the time it comes into our fa- cility as a piece of bare laminate and the time we fabricate it. We throw it through our ther- mal shocks, then it goes out the door to a UPS truck, into a warehouse, into the assembly plant, and then they operate on it, and in many cas- es, much more severe thermal shocks, such as putting it through their wave solder four or five times, because of the nature of what is going on. Goldman: People might have more of an appreci- ation of what they're doing if they know where it's going. Bigelow: Absolutely. They also need to know that it's going to go through some rough pro- cesses. If things aren't right, it's not going to get better, folks (laughs). Goldman: You're not insisting on this training just to make life difficult for them. You've got some real reasons behind it. Any other thoughts on this sub- ject of employees, hiring and training, and the dif- ficulties? How about finding process engineers? Same deal? Bigelow: Same deal. Every process engineer wants to work for the biggest company they can, and have a staff job rather than be active on the shop floor. Goldman: They all want to be managers, right? Bigelow: This industry is an on-the-shop-floor manufacturing type of industry. We're a hands- on industry. I do think, and I've had a lot of conversations with my management team, with other companies, that this industry is getting long in the tooth. We all have the same issue where every company has a great team of peo- ple that has tremendous tribal knowledge from years of experience. They're all at the stage, or reaching the stage, where they want to look at retirement. The industry is going to have an un- precedented number of hiring needs going for- ward, probably around the same numbers as in the '70s, when the industry was really in a growth mode. We all need to get good people. We need to have people who can learn, and can understand the complexity of a circuit board. One of the "HELP WANTED" WITH IMI'S PETER BIGELOW