IPC International Community magazine an association member publication
Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1503860
IPC COMMUNITY 46 SUMMER 2023 focus on things like seniority or experience, but rather on who would most benefit from the IPC training. Both groups went through the same training no matter their level of experience. Lorena, how were the courses designed and offered? Lorena Villanueva: These courses were designed and approved by the industry. EAO is offered fully in Spanish, which was huge for Benchmark because it's very hard to find operators who are bilingual. The classes are self-paced and online. Benchmark provided the computers and gave the employees the opportunity to go through one or two mod- ules at a time. Did you find equally positive or negative feedback on the types of courses offered? Elizabeth: We had almost 100% positive results from both groups. Even though some of the participants were more familiar with instruc- tor-led types of instruction, they understood the value of the material they were learning. Obviously it feels good to have such great feedback. In what other ways did you use those results? Elizabeth: The training helped them look back at some of the mistakes they made with certain products; maybe it went to scrap because they couldn't figure out how to do X, Y, or Z. Now, after taking the training, they went back to work and saw how they could fix things mov- ing forward. The engineering group's feedback was that they learned a lot, and that the course would be useful to colleagues in management roles in the organization. Sometimes management won't be as open to training because it takes staff off the shop floor, it can be expensive, and the results are hard to measure. How did Benchmark approach this? Elizabeth: We didn't have resistance, but when this was rolled out, we were still dealing with COVID and other global issues such as lack of materials, long lead times, and planning for headcount. So, when we asked managers to participate in the pilot, they had to consider their existing challenges when making a com- mitment. Speaking of managers, who participated in the Certified Electronics Program Manager (CEPM) course? Elizabeth: We only had one director of program management who took the CEPM training at one of our big sites in Tijuana. Program manag- ers manage customers and projects. Once this director completed IPC's CEPM course, she expressed to Lorena that she wanted to take both the operator and engineering courses. She just wanted to learn as much as she could. She The facility in Tijuana, Mexico.