Show & Tell Magazine

Show-and-Tell-2018

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SHOW & TELL MAGAZINE 2018 I I-CONNECT007 83 to look at any new equipment that can reliably strip off Mylar on very thin substrates. He men- tioned that he had just left the Matrix booth very excited with their technology. Sanjay Huprikar VP of Solutions with IPC One of the charters of the IPC is to rep- resent the electron- ics industry glob- ally, and Sanjay was happy to report on the continued growth and expansion of the IPC in Europe. In fact, he mentioned that many of the new IPC stan- dards under development are coming out of the European committees. As one of IPC's four core pillars, Solutions includes a couple of exciting initiatives—Transportation and Work- force Development. One of the most interest- ing topics of discussion regarding transporta- tion was the "electronification" of the modern automobile and the high level of PCB integra- tion in the average vehicle. In an unrelated dis- cussion with another client, he mentioned his new Cadillac SUV contained over 300 printed circuit boards! The most important new devel- opment from my perspective is the new work- force development program the IPC has rolled out to offer training and skills that the average PCB newbie will need in order to be successful in this industry. We talked about the lack of young people entering the trades and factory work, and that reversing this trend starts with education like IPC is providing. Leo Lambert VP/Business Development of EPTAC EPTAC is the larg- est provider of IPC training in the United States and is often mistakenly thought of as part of IPC. Leo has been with EPTAC for a couple of decades and has witnessed first- hand the evolution of our industry (another opportunity for me to exchange "back in the day" stories). Most interesting was our discus- sion on the challenges EPTAC faces with the voluminous amount of constantly changing specifications they must not only be fully up to speed on, but also have training programs developed to support them. With a very com- pressed timeline from specification release to training requests, EPTAC is in a perpetual edu- cation mode. The company now has over 35 training classes to choose from, and 14 physi- cal locations in the U.S. One course that is critical to most of my clients is IPC certifica- tion of inspection personnel. However, when asked which class is most popular, Leo said that hand soldering is by far the course that is used the most. Matt Turpin President of Zentech As a client, Matt and I have known each other for quite a while, so I was interested in hearing his thoughts on the overall busi - ness climate. Like most of the folks I talked to, he was extremely optimistic at the business prospects for 2018 and beyond. The most interesting discussion we had involved the NIST Cybersecurity Frame- work, which is U.S. government guidance for private sector organizations that own, oper- ate, or supply critical infrastructure. When I asked Matt, "Isn't ITAR enough?" he laughed and said, "Not even close." On a scale of 1-10, ITAR is a "1" and NIST is a "10." The new NIST requires an order of magnitude higher level of security that covers people, networks, equipment, and infrastructure. Zentech has embraced this, and after spending considerable time, resources, and money in preparation, the company is now compliant. While NIST is offi- cially "voluntary," not being compliant is cer- tainly a barrier to certain market sectors and customers, and extends throughout the entire supply chain of a company. S&T

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