IPC International Community magazine an association member publication
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SEPTEMBER 2026 I I-CONNECT007 MAGAZINE 25 a tool I've used for almost 15 years in my managing director roles—that divides the company feedback into four categories. The top two boxes give you guidance on "critical" and "must-have" services for members, and the industry in general, and indicate where they are willing to invest in, indicating where they are willing to invest and identifying services they acknowledge are needed but don't feel they should invest in just yet. I have a second matrix that lists the topics and issues that came up during these conversations. I ranked them based on the members' feedback to determine the most critical and high-impact issues. These are the ones that will get immediate focus. What did you learn from this exercise? Interestingly, in the past, the lower-priority issues were actually the things delivering membership growth, not typically the priority-one issues. Though important overall, those issues tend to be more ex- pensive to address or involve. Members may be readily willing to pay for it, but nonmembers are not. Nonmembers need free or low-cost services that they perceive as high value to convince them to join. Once they have established the value of their membership, they are typically more ready to move toward priority-one initiatives and are willing to invest more in additional services. In Europe, we will focus on both areas from the outset. Can you share some of the specific feedback you received? The feedback we received indicated that industry companies, both Association members and non- members, expect executive roundtables, white pa- pers, and case studies as part of membership in a professional organization. They have certain top- ics on their minds, such as AI, the skills gap in the workforce, and smart robots. A hand-soldering competition on its own is certainly fun and inter- active, but it will not compel membership directly. If we want to leverage those areas, based on the members' feedback, we should do a live soldering competition with the hand-soldering world cham- pion against a robot. That would definitely get a lot of interest! Yes, you get the idea. It's about combining topics with formats that industry expects will help bring these things together. Another area of high interest is the roundtable discussion on topics top of mind for executives, including AI and the workforce skills gap. We believe there's value in discussing these two dimensions together because to use AI efficiently, you need people with the skills and experience to do so, and to develop those skills and experience, you need education and training. So, AI and workforce educa- tion go together. By the way, AI can accelerate the acquisition of new AI skills and make the whole educational experience more efficient. The best AI teacher sometimes is the AI. In case studies, when I spoke with two of the largest EMS companies in Europe, both mentioned that they work with many robots. When I visited their factories and warehouses, I saw the robots running around the warehouse, delivering BOM items to the next machine in the process. That was really fun to watch 10 humans and 10 robots all working together almost at the same time. Both companies said, in essence, "We are willing to support a case study on the efficiency and operational savings of cobots and robotic manufacturing in EMS because we think that's a huge trend, one that will be coming to smaller companies." After those meetings, I asked myself, "What might a white paper look like based on the feedback I've gotten so far from these companies during these conversations?" In the past, at several organiza- tions, I worked extensively on white papers. Three topics stood out: AI, rapid prototyping, and smart standards. They are intertwined. You cannot do prototyping in a rapid environment without AI, and you cannot do AI in the future of electronics without smart standards. So, this will be a very interesting intersection for the next four to five years. I am looking forward to a deep dive on that and feel it will be of great value to the industry. Dominik, there is a lot happening in Europe, and I wish you great success. I look forward to catching up with you again soon. I-CONNECT007