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December 2015 • The PCB Magazine 45 EIPC: FURTHERING THE REACH OF ELECTRONICS INDUSTRIES IN EUROPE This due diligence is critical so having a partner in Asia who's Chinese, speaks Chinese, and can actually establish this is really important. More and more that is happening, and I think it's necessary. The companies in Europe have specialization and can do certain parts of the business, and they might still have a great business. But more and more their customers want a greater offering and don't want to have to go to five or six different companies. They want to go to one company and say, "I want to have this and this, and you take care of it." But you have to have the partners for that. I see that's more and more important for sur- vival. We could dig our heads in the sand and say, "Oh no, we don't want to work with off- shore shops. We want to make sure we stay in Europe and we want to make sure we do it our- selves." But this is pure fantasy. In certain areas that works, and there can be an influence and then some business does come about, there's no doubt about it. But the days of Europe being 15–20% of world production are gone. We can't invest that much anymore—you can't even buy that equipment any more in Europe. You have to accept that that boat has sailed, but there's certain parts of this that we can benefit from. Networking would be the biggest benefit that comes to my mind. You can meet other people. There are many examples of people just meeting over a beer, over dinner or a cof- fee break, and finding another partner. By way of example, at the last conference a large Ger- man PCB manufacturer sat down and met a UK board supplier and they found a way of doing business together. They would not have met, I don't think, had they not come together at our event. The social side is certainly part of it, and the other part is technical. Matties: When are EIPC's conferences? Smit-Westenberg: We usually plan our winter conference for January/February, and then sum- mer around June. Sometimes we skip to Septem- ber, but I'm happy to announce that our winter conference will be in Dresden, January 21–22. Matties: How many days are the conferences usu- ally? Two days? Smit-Westenberg: It's one and a half days actu- ally, with a social event that's always on the first evening or afternoon. We have a bonus program where we take the people to a facility, this time it's Volkswagen, and after that we take them to dinner. It's always a very good event. That's, again, one of the networking events where peo- ple do business in a very informal atmosphere. We will go to the Volkswagen Phaeton fac- tory, where they build the Phaeton model. It's a glass house factory with very high-end equip- ment. We will have a two-day technical pro- gram that will inform people about a various list of topics, but the focus is automotive. Matties: That's a big focus I would think here in Europe. That's what's driving the industry now, isn't it? Smit-Westenberg: Absolutely. Morgan: After the conference in January, the next one will be in Edinburgh in the UK, prob- ably next June. These will attract probably 60– 100 people. We present a varied and detailed program. More and more we've had an academ- ic thread in the last years as well, to show re- search and how things can move forward, and research is still very strong in Europe. We have a strong academic link through Martin Goosey, our VP of Technology, where we FeATure inTerview Kirsten Smit-Westenberg, executive director, eIpc.