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34 The PCB Design Magazine • July 2015 people have full-time jobs and sometimes over- time and I've got them working every night and weekends. I get on the telephone with the West Coast at 8:00 p.m. and I'm on until like 11 p.m. or midnight with them working on it. They're working Saturdays, Sundays, holidays. They are doing all kinds of stuff and they're not even get- ting paid for it. They're doing it out of the ded- ication to make new things happen. So when you say you'd like to help do something, any help we can get, to get out or develop a course, we would take it. Matties: how do we get more designers to go out and learn manufacturing? Ferrari: I used to market to upper management. I showed the cost implication of a designer do- ing it incorrectly and how it affected their bot- tom line. The more they learned about that, the more they learned to appreciate the need to keep that designer up to date on technolo- gy. They need to invest some dollars to educate them. Let them go to conferences, let them go to chapter meetings where they get tours manu- facturing facilities. When you say manufactur- ing, that's a broad term—that's assembly, test, field service, and board fabrication to name a few. All of those are items that the chapters at- tempt to cover. They'll bring in speakers. I speak around, Rick Hartley speaks around, and they'll program specific topics. The more education that they can do, the better off they are. I encourage designers that whenever they go out and get any kind of education, wheth- er they attend a seminar or whatever it is, that they bring back a little write-up on what they learned and how it can benefit the company. If they just say they learned this, that and the other, the next thing you know the company is saying, "Don't go there anymore because someone is going to steal you." If the designer comes back and says, "We could have used this here, we could have used that there," that kind of thing, then they become very valuable and they're justifying the company letting them go to the next one. That kind of addresses some of what we're talking about. The last thing to address, and it's something dear to my heart, is how do you attract new kids into this? I'm going to tell you about the research I did when I was with IPC. As I mentioned, I went to colleges. I found out that all of the major colleg- es were not interested unless you provided an in- structor, the curriculum, and the students. The students won't add anything to their schedule unless it is required. On the other hand, we had good successes with several community colleges. Now it really hits home. I don't know if you have any kids in high school, but go to a high school, and go to the guidance counselor, and ask them "What listings do you have for career opportunities in printed wiring board design?" They come back and say "Oh, mechanical draw- ing." "No, printed wiring board." Printed wiring board design doesn't exist. How do you attract someone into a field that doesn't exist? Matties: if you don't catch them at that age it's not even a thought. Ferrari: You have to get them at the high school level, maybe get involved with some of the schools on some little projects or something like that. Several of the chapters used to run ca- reer days and they'd invite fabricators, assem- blers and other support companies, just a little tabletop thing for the high school students to come in and be exposed to manufacturing in a field that the high school doesn't even say ex- ists. These career days were very successful for both the potential designers and those exhib- iting. From my perspective, we need to start at that level to show them that it exists. The kids are sitting there on tablets and computers, learning all kinds of things. They know you pro- gram that, they understand that, but they don't know that somebody had to manufacture it. Matties: gary, thank you so much. Ferrari: Thank you. PCBDESIGN feature GARy FERRARI SHARES HIS THOUGHTS ON PCB DESIGN AND MORE continues