Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1216587
72 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2020 Qixian Zhang: Thank you. The electronics man- ufacturing industry has always used IPC stan- dards, though simply as manufacturing indi- cators in the past. There are too many IPC standards for us to systematically implement or even completely understand. The first time I heard about IPC QML, it was kind of a coinci- dence going back to an IPC meeting five years ago. Back then, we thought the IPC QML pro- gram was very good. For a company like us, which specializes in manufacturing and production, standards have significant value. In the past, when we communi- cated with a customer, we would bring along the standards and consider each line item, one by one. With an IPC QML manufac- turer certification, our customers can recognize that we have imple- mented the series of IPC stan- dards. Of course, there is also the endorsement of third party super- vision through this process. We claim to be implementing IPC standards, but how do we prove it? The simplest and the most authorita- tive proof is IPC validation; it is the best way to earn public trust, and it makes the custom- ers rest assured they can put products in our hands because they know that we strictly fol- low the IPC standards. Meanwhile, QML is a new thing with a high threshold for entry. Many specialized OEMs are having difficulty implementing it. We have our own requirements for self-validation. Through QML validation, we expect to learn about our position in the industry and deter- mine what stage we have reached. Our second goal is we hope that validation helps us improve the current process and enhance prod- uct line norms for better quality. To sum up, our QML valida- tion is driven by requirements from the industry, the custom- ers, as well as ourselves. ASKEY has gone through many audits by ISO systems (i.e., ISO9001, QC08000, IATF16949, ISO13485) and the customers. However, the past audits were limited to spe- Figure 1: Examples of the ASKEY product portfolio. Qixian Zhang