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80 The PCB Magazine • May 2017 Goldman: Get it into the colleges at least and get them into our industry right away, right? Roberson: Exactly, and that's a big thing that I think John Mitchell, the IPC board and all of us have seen; in order to get the interest and bring in the younger ones, we've got to do it before they hit the industry. Because once they hit the industry they come in and somebody says, "Okay, we need you to do IPC certifica- tion here," and they respond, "What the heck is IPC?" We need to introduce this in college, tech college, even as far back as high school and of- fer introductory courses, not necessarily a cer- tification, but work with the training centers to get them to have their soldering 101 class- es and garner the interest. Then we can steer a few of the engineering candidates, not necessar- ily away from the EE or the ME, which are fine courses, but maybe into a manufacturing engi- neer or a process engineer. Speaking of process engineers, there's a big push coming out in the form of a new commit- tee we've put together for a process engineering course, and from our meeting at APEX it is turn- ing out to be quite a production. By that I mean it' s not going to be a single one-off class where you sit down for a week and you get the rubber stamp and you say you've learned a standard. The goal with the process engineering class is it's a longer- term thing, a year to two years to completion, and the concept the committee is working on now is more along the lines of what the CID does. To become a CID instructor, there's a men- toring program and an approval process—those kind of things. The process engineering course, as it looks like now, will have a limited num- ber of candidates for each cycle. If somebody wants to do this program, they would complete our application process, and they would talk to the approval committee. Once approved, they would start with courses like the J-STD-001 or the A-610 or the 6012, whatever is appropriate. They would show knowledge and learning of each of the process steps. Putting together a design proposal, going through the design as- pect, putting together a process, putting togeth- er a time-temperature profile, everything that a general process engineer would need to know, and they would be mentored, by one or more of the committee members. At the end of that process, they would have a report compiled and they would talk to the committee and present their findings: "Here's what I've learned and here's the general process." The end-goal is for someone to have become a certified IPC process engineer. It can be held up as a real accomplish- ment and not just a piece of paper certification. Goldman: Is that expected to be something where people are in college, or they're already hired at a company and they're aspiring to be a process en- gineer? Roberson: It can be either way. We're not go- ing to exclude others, but the aim initially is go- ing to be the younger engineers, along the same lines as the emerging engineer program. We're hoping to have the younger folks come in and get this from the beginning of their career and see the entire process overall, rather than being stuck in the middle and filtering out and find all these extra processes along the way. Goldman: There will have to be some trouble- shooting sessions along the way. Roberson: Exactly. I started as an operator on the line and worked my way up through ma- chine technician, engineer and so on. Been there, done that sort of thing in the last, well, only 30 years compared to you and Dave, who have been around a while longer than that— not to say you're old (laughs). What I mean is, having seen it from inside and outside, a person needs to know what the process should look like to know when something goes wrong and where's it going wrong. Then you can focus in, rather than take the shotgun approach. Goldman: So, when you say young engineers, they're already at a company and want to move along or gain a lot more experience and knowl- edge, without a hard knock way maybe. Roberson: Yes, but it could be for college lev- el as well as when they're coming in, because we're talking about having allowances for hav- ing taken certain courses in college to meet these things. If it's a college student coming in INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE—PREPARING THE NEXT GENERATION