IPC International Community magazine an association member publication
Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1497169
IPC COMMUNITY 12 SPRING 2023 During the pandemic, it was so reassuring to talk to other companies about what they were and weren't doing and to hear their ideas. When you have multiple companies and peo- ple, you always get better ideas. Obviously, IPC standards are so important, and the certification adds to the quality of our team. All our employees are trained to J-STD- 001 standards. In addition, our employees are trained, and all assemblies are built to IPC-A-610 or IPC/WHMA-A-620 Class 2 o r C l a s s 3 s t a n d a rd s , depending on customer requirements. If repairs are needed, certain employees are trained to IPC-7711/7721. Please tell us about a recent challenge and how you addressed it. The ongoing labor shortage is a huge problem for us. If I could find staff for a second shift, I would hire 40 employees tomorrow; we have that much work coming in. Recently, we needed tes- ters for our second shift and asked the son of an employee if he would come over after school and test boards for four hours. After he agreed, we asked if he had friends to bring with him; now a whole carload of high school kids test for four hours at night, three or four nights a week. It's good money for the kids and a real help to Arc-Tronics. We are hav- ing some success as we set up intern- ships through local high schools and colleges. We hope it might lead to an engineering career for many of them. We do a lot of promoting within, but we also need outside experi- ence. We rely on the IPC Wage and Salary Survey to ensure we are pay- ing a competitive wage and in line to attract outside talent. How has the industry changed in the past 30 years? For many years, I was uncomfortable when customers often treated us like suppliers and not partners. Luckily, that has changed. For example, Philips is a large customer that wanted to help us improve our service and reduce costs, so they sent a half-dozen consultants to our facilities for two years. They were instrumental in help- ing us cut costs, and we, of course, shared those savings with them. We thought we couldn't afford to add more man- ufacturing engineers, and they told us we couldn't afford not to. They showed us how the manufacturing engineers would pay for themselves in less than six months, and we now have six more manufacturing engineers. Automation is a big change, of course. The pick-and-place machine suppliers are making major advances in speed, accuracy, and feed- back to other machines. It helps us remain Obviously, IPC standards are so important, and the certification adds to the quality of our team.