Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1367446
26 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2021 are highly involved in committee activities and are recognized as leaders in the industry. When someone is invited to become a leader of a gen- eral committee, they also become a voice on the Technical Activities Executive Committee (TAEC) which oversees all standards devel- opment. e TAEC and the TAEC Global (a small subset of seven representatives from the industry with a global presence) provide tech- nical expertise and guidance on the standards development activities and programs. Matties: How does a topic become a commit- tee? Rowe: We receive our ideas from industry. We also have interest groups that work together to discuss projects and provide input to our projects pipeline, and we will be introducing a place on our website where new project ideas can be proposed. Andres Ojalill: In Europe, all committee chairs are members of the European Standards Steer- ing Committee that Teresa mentioned. We have monthly meetings to discuss potential needs and caps; it could be anything from a recommendation for an existing committee to improve something or adding something to the document, to an area which is not cov- ered anywhere else. At that point, we reach out to more companies in Europe to deter- mine whether there is enough interest so we can group together and start the project. From there, we would develop a project initiation number request, or PIN, which goes to the TAEC for review and approval. Matties: Who is on the steering committee and how do they become part of it? Because that sounds like the voice that's really driving the car forward, if you will, on these selections. Ojalill: e leaders of task groups that were estab- lished in Europe came together and established that group. For example, the IPC-6012 medical addendum task group and automotive addendum task group we already dis- cussed before. at's how it started in Europe, but it has a much longer history in United States. Could you cover that part, Teresa? Rowe: An IPC steering committee is a group of forward-thinking industry experts, typically from a specific region, who provide ideas for new projects and standards to IPC. We have several of these groups, but we also have industry experts come forward asking if they can talk to us about an idea they have. Many times, projects are born out of those discussions. Jorgensen: Oh, this happens all the time. Where do the projects or the standards come from? It could be from a lunch discussion, or something that comes up through a commit- tee while they're working on a document and realize that they need to have another support- ing document to go with it. But the message to communicate here is that we have a process— it's set, understood, and standardized across all of our committees. We have a committee structure and committee hierarchies. We also have document designation structures so that when somebody comes to IPC with an idea, we can quickly move that idea from the discus- sion points with a couple of bullets to a pub- lished industry standard following our proce- dures. A good example happened in the fall of 2019. We had a couple of people approach IPC and say, "We need a standard for digital twin. ere's a lot of misunderstanding out in the industry about what digital twin is because the definitions for digital twin are typically solutions-based, but it's whatever a company decides that they want to call it. We need a standard." We formed a small group that had interest in developing the standard, we got the Andres Ojalill