IPC International Community magazine an association member publication
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JULY 2026 I I-CONNECT007 MAGAZINE 57 The Habit That Makes This Stick Before you ask AI for help, stop for 60 seconds and answer four questions. 1. What does this tool need to know about my plant? 2. What does it need to know about this workflow? 3. What is it allowed to do, and what is it not allowed to do? 4. What should it ask me before it starts writing? That is your pre-prompt checklist, and two weeks of it will change your output quality. The next level is to stop rewriting the same context from scratch and save your best blocks: one plant profile, one sales profile, one material-issue template, one 8D support template, one standard guardrail block. Why This Matters Beyond Your Own Desk Context compounds. It makes AI more useful at the individual level, more useful at the team level, more consistent, and, at the company level, an asset. The real advantage starts when your people can teach AI your plant, so sales drafts sound like your company, issue summaries follow your logic, and new employ- ees ramp faster on context that is already reusable. Context control is not a minor prompting trick. It is the beginning of organizational memory. For Monday Morning Pick one lane: sales RFQ clarification, material issue communication to the floor, or 8D draft support. Then do this: 1. Open a fresh chat. 2. Write a 150-300-word context block for that one workflow. 3. Add one guardrail block that says what AI may not do. 4. Use CRIT and require one-question-at-a-time clarification. 5. Save the prompt if the output is useful. 6. Reuse it this week and improve it once. Quality 8D for Customer Corrective Action This is where healthy skepticism belongs. AI can help write an 8D, but AI cannot replace evidence. Its real value is structure, clarity, and questioning: separating fact from assumption, drafting contain- ment language, flagging where the story jumps ahead of the evidence, and turning rough notes into a cleaner customer-facing draft. CRIT Prompt: 8D Structure and Missing- Evidence Review Context: We are preparing a customer correc- tive action using the 8D method for a PCB quality issue. I will provide the complaint summary, known facts, containment actions, investigation notes, and evidence still missing. Do not present hypotheses as facts. Do not claim root cause unless supported by evidence I provide. AI is supporting structure and questioning only. Role: Act as an experienced quality engineer from Boeing, helping organize a disciplined 8D draft. Interview: Ask me one question at a time about the defect description, affected product, containment taken, investigation status, and proof supporting each conclusion. Task: After the interview, produce 1) a draft D1-D8 structure, 2) a list of statements that are factual vs. assumed, and 3) a list of missing-evidence ques- tions the team should answer before sending the report to the customer. It is not something to ship straight to a customer, but it is a strong draft to bring into a quality review meeting. LANE 3