Standard of Excellence: Speed vs. Quality in Customer Service
Knocking Down the Bone Pile: Revamp Your Components with BGA Reballing
Global Sourcing Spotlight: Balancing Speed and Flexibility Without Sacrificing Control
Bob Neves: IPC Continues Its Global Reach
March 3, 2022 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
During IPC APEX EXPO, Nolan Johnson visited with Bob Neves of Microtek Laboratories China and the new chair of the IPC Board of Directors. Nolan asks Bob about IPC’s views on the disruption in supply chain, about restoring PCB fabrication in the United States, and how the IPC is looking to resolve supply chain issues from a global perspective.
Nolan Johnson: Looking through the rest of 2022 from your seat on the board, at the end of the year, what will be the big story or stories for our industry? Where are we going to be?
Bob Neves: That’s a good question. As the pandemic ends and things start going back to normal, we are unsure of what the industry will look like. Our members have spent a lot of time fighting fires trying to solve supply chain issues and I am unsure how quickly they’re going to go away. I believe one thing we have definitely learned is that hiring qualified people is a challenge now and that’s not necessarily going to go away quickly. IPC is addressing the need for industry education. The IPC board has really stressed the need to create an educational model that will make it easier for our members to hire skilled people who have knowledge that our members need, so that they’re not starting from zero going into the workforce.
Workforce education and skills challenges are something we’re really trying to solve. There are obviously additional regional issues that our government relations (GR) committees are trying to address given the supply chain has changed dramatically for a variety of economic and political reasons. There is a big push to move the supply chain more locally. As that develops and needs change, our goal is to help our members adapt to the changes that are going to happen post-pandemic. Other than the very clear educational needs, I don’t know if the industry has a clear understanding of what the supply chain will look like as we move forward. We’re watching that carefully, and we continue to fund the initiatives that we believe benefit our membership. The issues created by the recent pandemic have given the organization some time to react and push these things forward and to focus on them.
On the Standards front, the recent implementation of our IPCWorks digital platform is helping us better manage document development and has allowed us to improve the process of creating standards. We’re working hard on the IPC bookstore, our web presence, and just getting the word out about our mission and who we are as an organization.
To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2022 Show & Tell Magazine, click here.
Share on:
Testimonial
"Our marketing partnership with I-Connect007 is already delivering. Just a day after our press release went live, we received a direct inquiry about our updated products!"
Rachael Temple - AlltematedSuggested Items
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
10/31/2025 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007Last week, the IMPACT conference took place in Taipei, bringing together advanced packaging experts from around the globe to share their knowledge. We’ll be bringing you post-conference coverage over the next few weeks, so look for that in our newsletters, and in the Advanced Electronic Packaging Digest. Other news seemed to have the U.S. at the center of the global discussions. My picks start in Phoenix, where TSMC, NVIDIA, and Amkor are all scrambling to establish new capabilities. There’s nothing like a strong demand signal to cause build-out, and AI chips are doing exactly that.
I-Connect007 Welcomes New Columnist: Leo Lambert, EPTAC
10/30/2025 | I-Connect007I-Connect007 is excited to announce a column by Leo Lambert, an industry veteran with 40 years of experience, an award winner, and technical director at EPTAC. This column, Learning With Leo, will explore the evolution and related challenges of electronics product assembly, especially as it relates to training.
Better Sustainability Policies for Electronics
10/29/2025 | Diana Radovan, Global Electronics AssociationI joined the Global Electronics Association in August 2025 as the director of sustainability policy. Since then, much has happened in terms of geopolitics and in the development and re-envisioning of sustainability policies in the industry. While the European Commission has released several legislative packages to simplify sustainability requirements (“omnibus”), these developments haven’t yet settled and are not in effect. Given the many recent and ongoing public consultations, with often conflicting input from a broad range of stakeholders, final negotiations remain rather polarized among policymakers.
SMTAI 2025 Review: Reflecting on a Pragmatic and Forward-looking Industry
10/27/2025 | Marcy LaRont, I-Connect007Leaving the show floor on the final afternoon of SMTA International last week in Rosemont, Illinois, it was clear that the show remains a grounded, technically driven event that delivers a solid program, good networking, and an easy space to commune with industry colleagues and meet with customers.
Come Together: Tom Marktscheffel Used Data to Build CFX and a Global Factory Standard
10/27/2025 | Sandy Gentry, Community MagazineWhen Tom Marktscheffel, director of product management software solutions at ASMPT, looks back on his nearly three decades in electronics manufacturing, one word stands out: data. “Data is the new gold,” he says. Without it, automation, artificial intelligence, and the factory of the future are impossible. With it, the industry can move from manual, error-prone processes to smart, connected systems that make real-time decisions.