Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1514628
JANUARY 2024 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 43 About a year ago, it was difficult to hire. We just didn't get in applications. But it's been bet- ter recently. Now we get candidates, and we don't see as much competition when it comes to compensation. You need to have a hiring cul- ture too, where you engage people as they're coming in the door. ere's a lot of opportu- nity for our industry to do things differently. As far as training, we really like IPC's Emerg- ing Engineer program. It's cross-functional and promotes cooperation among normally com- petitive manufacturers to improve the entire industry. I can have my engineers mentored by someone in another company. Europe pro- vides a good example of this "coopera-tition," where they have apprenticeship programs in the trade skills. ey learn how to do every- thing with their hands. Broader education must happen within the industry, at our facilities, and at the operator level. We think about it at the engineering level, but we need to do a better job for the operators by giving them full visibility of PCB plant operations. You can understand everything end to end if you put the time in. at's some- thing I like about PCB manu- facturing. It's a multi-engineer- ing sort of discipline—a butterfly effect. If an operator sees something hap- pen but doesn't understand where it came from to even know who to call, they just pass on the defect. We can also do a better job of educating beyond what a specific operator does. at's what I really like about I-Connect007, and I'm always pointing people to your con- tent because outside of that, there's not much literature. e textbooks are confusing. Look at metallization, for example. It should start with hands-on training, and then go back to the textbook to read about every possible way to metallize something. Start with hands-on, then move to a more traditional academic envi- ronment. the corporation. We are also intentional about making space for employees who have ideas about how to do something better. We are care- ful not to shut down any idea because there's no monopoly on good ideas. We shouldn't have hubris about that. at builds our culture as well. We haven't written down our princi- ples and such just yet. Right now, we are deter- mining what those are. Culture is not written policy; it's how you act. We have two cultures: the internal culture and the customer-facing culture. e end custom- er's needs can be lost on those in the plant when they are dealing with a problem right in front of them. So, communication becomes our most important tool. Are you putting your best foot forward to service that customer, and remembering that every customer has a customer? It's a little eas- ier at companies like ours that do a large portion of our work in aerospace and defense, but we have to remember our inter- nal customers as well. At the plant level it comes down to a level of customer service that we need to continually work on. Sean, market conditions have been up and down. If you're in the defense industry, they may be on the way up again. Is that what you are seeing? While defense has maintained expectations and even seen growth, commercial projects are of some concern. Other executives tell me they're seeing this same trend. It's important to maintain a balance and we like our portfolio right now. e market segments help balance one another. One of the great challenges for companies right now is hiring—finding people who will actually show up. How are you offsetting or managing that? We have two cultures: the internal culture and the customer- facing culture.