On Location at HKPCA: IPC’s Mitchell and Carmichael on Asia, the Global Industry Outlook, and Trump

Estimated reading time: 16 minutes

Mitchell: I don't know if it's surprising, but we're trying to do a lot of new things at IPC. We're trying to upgrade our education systems. We're trying to be more responsive to industry needs in terms of standards turnaround time. In the electronics industry, six years is not optimal turnaround time for industry’s most important and needed standards. For some standards it's still OK, but in general we try to speed this up. I'm a little surprised at some of the resistance to some of the changes, but then again, not really that surprised. With any change, there's resistance. So that's been a little bit hard.

It's been surprising at how much value there is in the intangibles to IPC. So standards, that's easy. It's quantifiable. I need to do this, here's the value of it. It saves me hundreds of people to generate my own standards. So that's easy to quantify. Education, you get a return on that. That's easy, etc. The intangible things, developing and participating in events like this, events like the IPC APEX EXPO, where you get a chance to sit in a standards meeting or sit in a training session or visit somebody in a booth and share a technical problem and ways to solve it.

The camaraderie of the industry is pleasantly surprising. People genuinely care and want to help. One individual shared with me, “You know, I had this issue going on in Chicago and I was on the West Coast. I happen to know somebody in Chicago from one of my APEX meetings. I called them up. He actually took care of  business for me.” That's awesome! I mean, he had a conflict and couldn't tackle it but an industry peer could. That type of camaraderie does exist. Somebody will sit in an IPC meeting and say “Hey, I'm facing this problem.” “Oh, I've seen this problem. Let me tell you about it; 15 years ago this is what we did to solve it.”

So that has been such a joy to see, that this industry, when it comes together, is willing to help each other. It's not about just being a competitor. There is that, but in the places where they can collaborate appropriately, they do, and that's really wonderful to see.

Matties: How about you, Phil?

Carmichael: We have a slightly different paradigm here. One of the things that's different in Asia is that we do have other national and local printed circuit boards and associations like the CPCA, we even have one here in Shenzhen. Despite that, by offering some good value, less so of the networking camaraderie that's done in the U.S., but adding some serious value to people, has allowed us to basically triple our membership in that four-year period. I was surprised that we would be able to grow it that fast. I'd say that's the biggest surprise.

Again, I think the other issue is that IPC is a global organization and we used this example recently in Beijing when John was there earlier this year on a visit. Our partners in Asia or China specifically, still think of us as a U.S. organization. So I like to take out a standards book and show them at the beginning of the book the people who contributed to this are increasingly not just Americans. They're Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and so on. So I've kind of started using the example that we're like a mixed-race child. So that you can't say that we're 100% from North America because we have Europeans that are writing on these standards and we've got a lot of Asians that are involved in the standards. We've got 350 people who contribute voluntarily on standards in China alone.

That's part of the effort that goes into building IPC as a global organization. I think that's also been a surprise to me that we've got as many people participating on the standards front as we do.

Matties: One thing that's been really surprising to me is the intensity with which people approach the hand soldering competition. That was really surprising. You know, when I first heard the story that we're going to do the soldering, I thought, “Oh, that's cute,” and it's turned out to be like an Olympic style event. It's really quite impressive in what you've done and how you’ve raised the importance of it.

Carmichael: We would be remiss if we didn't say this year for the first time, the global championship is going to be held here in Shenzhen. It will be held here Friday.

Matties: Nice!

Carmichael: And so this was not just China, not just AP, but worldwide.

Mitchell: You've got people flying in from all over the world. There will be a competitor from Europe, from France, who will be participating in the finals. The other thing that's going on here in China that we're looking at closely to maybe make more global as well is the PCB design competition. We had more than 250 people participate this year.

Carmichael: We had 1,000 entries. We've whittled it down to 228 qualified and we just had the competition earlier.

Matties: That's a large area of growth in this region.

Mitchell: Right. And one of the challenges with the hand soldering competition is that there's not a lot of hand soldering going on in the U.S. The U.S. has not been a strong participant in that. However, PCB design is everywhere. So that's why I think it might be very interesting to expand it. Again, this is nice. It's something that started in China. Let's take it across the world.

Matties: I appreciate you guys coming by today. Any last thoughts?

Carmichael: Well, we're always happy to talk to I-Connect007. You're really a true voice of the industry and we appreciate the opportunity. It's great, the segments and the way you hit them, etc., and helping us reach the industry through you in these types of interviews. So thank you very much.

Matties: We appreciate you guys very much also. Thank you.

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