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December 2015 • The PCB Magazine 19 A CONVERSATION WITH IPC PRESIDENT AND CEO JOHN MITCHELL you think this product is bad, or you think it should be eliminated. That's fine. We want a safer environment too. However, let's make sure that the science actually proves this out be- fore we go and create a regulation that's going to cost the industry a billion dollars, and then have no effect." We're very active in D.C. right now, and we're looking to expand our efforts in Europe. We're doing some things in Europe and actually looking to be much more active there. You'll see more activity from IPC in the coming months. Goldman: Is that in conjunction with EIPC? Mitchell: Not necessarily. EIPC is focused pri- marily on the PCB sector, and we're trying to cover the entire supply chain. We're in the pro- cess of establishing an IPC European Electron- ics Council that has OEMs, assemblers, and PCB manufacturers, etc., which are all a part of this council. The role of the council is to help iden- tify critical issues and opportunities that will ul- timately strengthen the competitive excellence of IPC members. Goldman: Is that incorporating EIPC then? Mitchell: You have to be an IPC member to be a part of it. Those members who are also IPC members could be a part of that as well. The last "S" in our aspirational goals acro- nym stands for solutions. We're looking at so- lutions both big and small. Let me give you an example of each. On the topic of big solu- tions, back in 2013, IPC inherited a group called PERM, a lead-free high-reliability electronics in- dustry consortium. A lot of people mistakenly think lead-free processes have already been im- plemented, but the aerospace, defense, military, and medical sectors, haven't yet made the lead- free conversion. There are some problems on the forefront. We really just haven't done the science behind it to figure out how to take lead- free into the higher reliability space. So IPC is becoming more active in trying to solve that big problem by raising funds, getting experiments done, etc. That's a big industry problem we're trying to solve. On the smaller side, there are little things like when we're working on a standard, there may be a table or something, or a certain spec in the standard where people are saying, "Why is it 12 microns instead of 11, or 15?" for exam- ple. Many companies have difficulty wanting to share their data because they feel it's propri- etary. In that case, we might say there is a broad impact and we might actually go out to the in- dustry and say, "Is this something you'd like have us get the actual data on?" Maybe we'll go pass the hat around and say, "Okay, we need each of these 100 companies to put in $1,000 and we'll go run the experiment, and then it will be public data." Those are kind of smaller solutions, if you will. That's really the four areas—standards, edu- cation, advocacy, and solutions—where IPC is trying to help the industry continue its growth path, to run more efficiently and more effec- tively as companies. Goldman: Allow me to digress for a moment. I'm a printed circuit board person, and the IPC was founded by PCB people. Mitchell: That's right. Fifty-seven years ago, IPC was founded to become the voice of the printed circuit board industry. Today, IPC still remains that voice as it guides the PCB industry through dramatic changes. Goldman: I often feel as though the assembly part of our industry is overshadowing the PCB in IPC. I have especially noticed that in the edu- cation and training area over the last dozen or FeATure inTerview