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46 The PCB Magazine • December 2015 do have programs on microelectronics or elec- tronics where we have made a contribution, for example at Sheffield University and others. Also on the other side there are some prac- tical examples with new equipment being de- veloped, where we can actually showcase these companies to the EIPC members. We also have a strong training program and workshop pro- gram as well. We have two workshops coming up in December, one in Switzerland and the other in Germany. Matties: How well attended are the workshops? Morgan: We've got 40 or so signed up for De- cember. Smit-Westenberg: Yeah, we've already sold out at the Swiss workshop with 50 total registrants. Matties: Is that limited only to the members to participate? Morgan: No, members and non-members. Members get preferential rates. Non-members have to pay more money, but they can still go. We gain many members from these events. They go along and they like what they see. We do this in English and in German. We wanted Italian, but we didn't get a big traction for that. We are an international organization, so we primarily work in English. We shouldn't forget though that German-speaking Europe probably accounts for two-thirds of all of the PCBs made in Europe, if not slightly more. We have to be clear that we work with those as well. We have an alignment now with FED, which, as you see, share the stand with us. They're a professional association for PCB and electronic design based in Germany. They have, I think, over 600 members. They're much big- ger than we are, but they are a great fit for us. They wanted to have some leverage outside of German-speaking areas and markets, and we wanted to have more penetration within the German-speaking markets, so actually we found a great alliance, and we work very well together. This is our first workshop together, and we've already sold out with still about three weeks to go. I'm very happy about that. Matties: Fantastic. From the technical side, how do you populate your program? Morgan: We think of a theme, first of all. We think of what theme we'd like to address, and that comes from the members, largely—things that they're interested in—and then we have a call for papers. We're looking now at automo- tive reliability and technology development, which is strong in Europe, so we thought that was a good theme to start with. We put down a basic agenda and basic top- ics that we like, and we ask them to supply pa- pers on that basis. Then we put them together in different clusters and groups. We always have a strong reliability section. That's some- thing Europe specializes in. Reliability is a key part of what we do in Europe, and always has been. Automotive requires reliability, so we fit very strongly in that. We can't have vehicles or ABS systems failing whilst you're in the middle of a stop or your steering wheel doesn't work. You don't want your engine failing either so you're stranded out in the middle of who knows where. If you think about it, in the last 15–20 years, automobiles have become so reliable. The ser- vice intervals are going way out, and this is a huge area of progress. We want to learn from that and hear what these people have to say. We have some very strong contacts within the au- tomotive sector and Tier 1 suppliers from auto- motive here. Of course, there are new technolo- gies as well in automotive, like collision avoid- ance systems, radar systems, and fly-by-wire, which is now state of the art. Cars have become more and more electronic as time has gone on. In days gone by, the mechanical content would be the biggest value, and now it's the electron- ic content. Vehicles contain dozens of control units for many different reasons, whether it be the air bag, the ABS, traction control, transmis- sion, etc. That always features, to some degree, and we have many producers in Europe who supply into that industry—either in small volume for prototyping or for bigger volume. The big vol- ume tends to go offshore these days for these in- dustries, but there's always a phase, a beginning of life and end of life, where we have a strong FeATure inTerview EIPC: FURTHERING THE REACH OF ELECTRONICS INDUSTRIES IN EUROPE