Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/539281
32 The PCB Design Magazine • July 2015 ing it is that the companies are now realizing that they need to bring some new blood in. You can't just expect designers to understand all these new technologies by osmosis—it doesn't happen. They have to go someplace to get something going. Like I said, this year we're starting to see more. I hired three new instructors this year, and now all of a sudden we're out of instructors again. This is good. Demand is getting too high, so now I'm look - ing to add some more instructors. It's en- couraging though; I've dedicated my whole career to getting this designer stuff going. I'm pleased to see that it is starting to take off again. Matties: Do you think that part of the drive is reshoring? there's just this new competitive at- titude in America in manufacturing that we are starting to see in the field. Ferrari: I think every little piece is part of it. It's not just one item when you think about it, but there has to be some of that. What many com- panies did when it was outsourced was maybe keep a department of one designer to coordinate with overseas. As the overseas workers see the benefits that everyone else is getting, they want more and more. The company costs start to go up to the point that in some market segments it costs as much to get it there as it does over here. Now the companies are saying, "Let's just bring it back." You can bring it back, but you laid ev- erybody off and now you have to start hiring again. But now the technology has changed so much, it's just phenomenal where it is. The designer needs to know so much more, so you just don't hire somebody off the street and say, "Listen, you're a designer, and next month you better be designing these big complex boards." It just doesn't happen. Matties: the ciD program is great, but as you're saying, it's broad, it's not very specific. if there are designers struggling, according to our sur- vey, with space issues, layout, and functionality, how do we solve that? What's the solution? Ferrari: The program does introduce new tech- nologies such as planar capacitance for in- stance—getting rid of most of the decoupling capacitors that you just can't fit on the board. All the speeds are going up much higher, so we talk more about embedded components and embedded devices. We just can't possibly cover them in depth in the short period of time that they have there [in a workshop]. We original- ly worked on what we called focus modules to address specific technologies. I don't know if those will ever come out of IPC, but many of us offline, have decided that we may create some. Let's face it—we cannot update a course as fast as the technology changes. All the instructors tend to add some information about the latest and greatest when addressing the class. Matties: i'm really interested in this…our read- ers are saying they want to know more about how to address this issue, and i think there's a responsibility that we have to go out and help answer those questions. Ferrari: Our biggest issue in all of the years since we started this thing has been that it's all based on volunteers. We're rewriting both of the two courses and it's all done with volunteers. These feature GARy FERRARI SHARES HIS THOUGHTS ON PCB DESIGN AND MORE continues