Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1163814
34 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2019 training centers, and multiple inputs are sent to the IPC, which become difficult to address in a timely manner. That's the topic of discussion that we're orga- nizing for the training meetings: how to update the programs in a timely fashion. Although it sounds simple enough, many of the trainers at these meetings also attend the specification meetings, which causes conflicts in everyone's schedules. Thus, scheduling for meeting par- ticipation is difficult for most of the attendees of the technical meetings. Shaughnessy: Tell us about the new group at IPC. Lambert: A new higher-level training and ed- ucation committee was created to get a bet- ter understanding of those tasks, and those committees were creating sub-groups to ser- vice the various specification task groups. The training committee is looking at it in the perspective of the way the questions are writ- ten. Historically, IPC put questions together and submitted them for the training classes; now, IPC wants to know who's going to write the questions and verify that they're valid and defensible. IPC is also creating more controls over the use and application of the certifica - tion exams. Certain groups are being selected to create and review the questions, but these individuals cannot be instructors in those dis- ciplines. IPC is creating additional questions to store and use, which will eliminate the memorization of the questions as was done previously. To encourage new technology input into the specifications and other documents, IPC has now asked to accelerate the document devel- opment as they want the documents to be up- dated every three years from a five-year sched- ule. This is presenting problems for the devel- opers of the training programs to get the new programs out to the training centers in a time- ly manner. Previously, there was a sense that when the document came out, the training program would also be released. Getting the training programs out in the shorter time frame forces the reviewer to rush, and thereby miss many of the errors in the document. There were often a lot of mistakes in the newly re- leased training program because the informa- tion had not been approved at that time. Now, IPC is saying the training program has to come out after six months at the most. That gives us a little bit of time, but it's always a rush, so we will see what the results will be when the first couple of programs are released. Shaughnessy: I know IPC didn't like the idea of having the Summer Meetings at SMTAI be- cause that was only a couple months before IPC APEX EXPO, so it wasn't enough time for everyone to make the changes. Lambert: Right. We still have our own jobs to do, so that doesn't help. It's a busy time. Shaughnessy: I heard that the T-50 terms and definitions meeting was interesting this week, discussing "lead vs. lead" and how the term "terminal" also translates into "termination" in some other languages. Lambert: I remember when we had that discus- sion when surface-mount first came out. We soldered everything to pads and then to lands, referring to land area. And you're right, "lead" and "lead" are spelled the same way, and when you look at it in the document, how do you translate it? We have to address that because the documents are used globally. The T-50 peo- ple try to put the new definitions in the exist- ing specifications, so they're going crazy with all of the words. After the new words are in the specification documents for a couple of revi- sions, then those definitions will be relegated to the T-50 document. Shaughnessy: And then you need to consider whether a similar term is going to be a differ- ent character in Mandarin, right? Lambert: This past week, we were talking about Spanish. There's Castilian Spanish in Spain, but what about people in Mexico and Latin American countries? It's a different language, and IPC is trying to pick one that's good for