The Ecosystem of Industry Standards

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Standards are a community and governmental process, if you will, formalizing methods and techniques to allow for consistency and repeatability across the industry. Thus, there are many participants in the standards definition processes from individual volunteers to corporations to industry organizations—all participate in the standards processes in some way.

I-Connect007 reached out to representatives from several industry standards organizations and talked with them about how they participate in the standards process. Along the way, these conversations clarify which group does what, how they all work together as well as clarify and dispel a couple of industry myths.
Join us for some interview excerpts from IPC’s Dave Bergman, iNEMI’s Marc Benowitz, and Nextflex executives Scott Miller and Wilfried Bair.

IPC Continues Global Standards Initiatives

Dave Bergman, IPC VP of standards and technology, gives an update on the current state of IPC’s global development standards activity with new standards growth in industries—such as printed electronics for e-textiles and wire harnesses—as well as continued growth for IPC’s connected factory exchange and automotive standards.

Nolan Johnson: Dave, what’s your role with IPC?

Dave Bergman: I’ve been with IPC for 39 years. Currently, I responsible for our global development standards activity, our events at IPC APEX EXPO, and our IPC India office. I’m also involved with some co-team European activity with Sanjay Huprikar, IPC VP of member success.

Johnson: Let’s start out with an overview of IPC and standards. What’s the mission?

Bergman: We have been involved in standardization since 1959, and we have continued to develop from that. At our core, we focus on four areas encompassing electronics manufacturing and a little bit in general electronics. We start out at the design of the PCB, then move to the materials and fabrication—including the acceptance of PCB materials—as well as the assembly area—such as the materials, equipment involved, workmanship of the assembly product, and associated rework and modification of both board and assemblies.

As of January of this year, we have a tighter affiliation agreement with the Wire Harness Manufacturers Association (WHMA), and I also serve a role as executive director of WHMA. That is a reflection of a long collaboration between the two associations in the wire harness arena. We have a workmanship standard on wire harness as well as some design documents for that. We were looking to expand that in support of some of the automotive efforts we’re pursuing.

We do some in enclosure work and the component area, particularly as it supports electronics assembly manufacturing. And we have become involved in some corporate social responsibility, particularly with our standardization in China. We have a series of data standards that support companies if they have to report either conflict minerals or material safety concerns, such as Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH).

To read this entire interview, which appeared in the September 2019 issue of SMT007 Magazine, click here. Or download the PDF here.