Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1000349
22 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2018 get things they want, but they forget a lot of the basics and the fundamentals, which is where a lot of that experience comes from because we designed and put all the stuff in place for you to say "Google, ask me this," or "Google, search this." They think a lot of those answers are just there, the equipment does it, this does this, and they forget that a lot of that experience has to be there to understand the full product so that you know what you're doing, and if something is wrong, you know where to look. Las Marias: Right now, as a lot of the older generation will be leaving the industry and the new generation, those coming out of college and those that are, let's say five to 10 years into the job, they will be the leadership now. I think the experience is very important for the contin- ued success of the organization. Keeping: Correct, and I think I confirm what Bob said earlier. I remember when I first started, I didn't see as much education that was being available as I see now. As we're talking about a lot of these technologies that I'm referring to, let's say about ruggedization. we now have a clean and coating conference that happens every two years, but it only goes back ten years. For people 20–30 years ago, that avail- able knowledge was not there. IPC and SMTA have got a lot more mentorship and young engineer programs now. Those weren't there five or 10 years ago. There is a push to get that next generation speed, but you can only push so much. You also have them wanting to desire it as well. Las Marias: In our conversation with other indus- try experts, one of the key things that stood out for us also relates to what Bob mentioned earlier about the communication between the manu- facturers, the equipment suppliers and their customers. More and more I think now it's very critical for these stakeholders to work closely together even as early as the design stage for the manufacturing success of their products. Would you care to comment on that? Willis: Sure, just a starting point to lead into that. One of the things that I remember, this is again centuries ago when I was young, we did a program—you know this is not rocket science and I'm sure it happens in other parts of the world—where we made sure that some of our engineers working in PCB fabrication spent two or three weeks working in assem- bly, and vice versa. Those guys worked in PCB fab and their operation was about 600 people, and there was like 50 people in each of those different departments. That seemed very, very reasonable to us. Then, because we had a local college that most of our students were going to, we wrote whoever was the boss there at that time and said, "Look, what we would like to do is have one or two of your lecturers spend their summer vacation actually working in manufacture." Because all of our students and our students in the future will be coming through and we don't want to just have the standard text - book view. We want to know what happens in the real world and this is pretty much the same in any industry for fabrication, component handling, wire wrapping, prepara - tion—all the sort of core tasks we talk about today. We want you to spend some time in those areas, so