Conversations With Two IPC President’s Award Winners

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

We interviewed two of this year’s IPC President’s Awards, Joe Kane of BAE Systems and Zhiman (Susann) Chen of Zhuzhou CRRC Times Electric Co., Ltd. The IPC President’s Award is given to IPC members who have exhibited ongoing leadership in IPC and have made significant contributions of their time and talent to the association and the electronics interconnect industry. The award is a personal honor to recognize the winners’ selfless dedication to the electronics industry in terms of their time, expertise, and leadership. 

The IPC President’s Award is given to IPC members who have exhibited ongoing leadership in IPC and have made significant contributions of their time and talent to the association and the electronics interconnect industry. Individuals can receive this award only once. The award is a personal honor to recognize the winners’ selfless dedication to the electronics industry in terms of their time, expertise, and leadership. It is these people’s selfless dedication and hard work that promote the progress and development of IPC and the industry. 

The recipients for 2022 are: Zhiman (Susann) Chen, Zhuzhou CRRC Times Electric Co., Ltd.; Joe Kane, BAE Systems; and John Walls, Aegis Software. I-Connect007 technical editor, Patty Goldman interviewed Joe Kane and Edy Yu, PCB007 China Magazine managing editor interviewed Susann Chen. Excerpts from those two interviews follow. 

Joe Kane
As a senior principal engineer with BAE Systems in Endicott, N.Y., Joe Kane works in process engineering and supplier quality for electronics parts and assemblies. He has been active in IPC standards development for more than two decades, primarily with assembly and joining, cleaning and coating, product assurance, and printed board committees. 

Patty Goldman: Joe, congratulations. You’re up for one of the significant awards at IPC, the President’s Award. I sure would like to know more about all your IPC experiences. 

Joe Kane: Sure. I first got involved in IPC because I was responsible for some of the workmanship instructions for our business. Originally, they followed the old military specifications, MIL–STD-454 Requirement 5 and MIL P-28809, and things like that. When the government began canceling MIL specs and adopting industry standards in their place, back in the mid-`90s under the so-called Perry Initiative, IPC took over with J-STD-001 and IPC-A-610.

I was very surprised and happy to learn that we could have input to those things, which wasn’t possible in the past, because it was pretty much government fiat. You did what they said, and you didn’t know why. You could appeal and maybe your appeal could be heard, and maybe it might show up in the spec, but it was not under any particular revision cycle. The whole process was very opaque. No one really knew what was going on unless they were directly involved.

I started getting involved in some IPC meetings, primarily J-STD-001 and IPC-A-610. Some of my responsibilities changed, and I started taking on assignments in bare boards as well as assemblies, so I got involved in some of those committees. Eventually I led the bare board storage guideline that evolved into the IPC-1602 standard. I also got involved in the Assembly and Joining Handbook IPC-AJ-820. It was created to pull together some best practices from various IPC handbooks, along with a bit of explanation for some of the requirements and some additional detail that wasn’t in the specs themselves. I got to lead that committee. It was a steady and gradual progression, getting more and more involved and meeting some of the people. I started by showing up for meetings and weird things happened after that.

Continue reading this interview in Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO Show & Tell Magazine.

Zhiman (Susann) Chen
Susann Chen has been engaged in electronics and electrical manufacturing for more than 26 years. She is the member of IPC TAEC-Global, Chair of IPC ASSC, Chair of IPC/WHMA-A-620C-Rail Transit Addendum, co-chair of 7-31f China Task Group, vice-chair of IPC-A-610G-Rail Transit Addendum, and an active member of many task groups. For years, she has been dedicated to broadening and deepening IPC’s influence in international scope and committed to devoting more efforts to the contribution of IPC mission and aspirational goals. She has exhibited ongoing leadership and has made significant contributions of her time and talent to the association and the electronics interconnect industry. She cooperates with IPC China to successfully convene technical conferences and competitions, prompts the in-depth cooperation between IPC and the rail transit industry in China, encourages the participation in IPC trainings and events, and is committed to prompting crossover cooperation.

Edy Yu: First, congratulations on your receiving this year’s IPC President’s Award. Please tell us about that.

Susann Chen: The first feeling of receiving the call was, of course, amazing. For myself, I’m honored to make the modest contribution to such an admirable and respected platform like IPC, and I am even more overjoyed to get such high recognition. However, compared with those truly admirable grandmasters, I know that I just received this honor because I happened to be present on the occasion. This honor should be to all peer experts who devote themselves to the development and application of IPC standards, and to the broader and in-depth sustainable future development of IPC in China and all over the world. And I will be more committed to that cause.

Yu: Could you please review the origin of your cooperation with IPC?

Chen: The cooperation started at the beginning of this century, but can be traced back to the 1980s, when IPC standards such as IPC-A-600 and IPC-A-610 were first introduced into my company. For the last 20 years, I have been working hard to promote IPC standards development and application, training and certification, skill competition, and summit/forum in China, especially in the rail transit industry. There are indeed a couple of significant moments. One is at the end of 2018, when we obtained the approval from IPC and started to set up 7-31b-R and 7-31f-R, together with more than 200 experts from nearly 100 Asian companies, to develop IPC-A-610G-Rail Transit addendum and IPC/WHMA-A-620C-Rail Transit addendum, which is the first time both in rail transit industry and in Asia. Also at the end of 2018, I had the honor to join the TAEC Global Committee with six other experts from America, Europe, and Asia, to conduct administrative business on IPC technical activities. At the beginning of 2021, I was appointed as the chair of V-ASSC (Asia Standard Steering Committee) to guide the development and application of IPC standards and explore innovative ideas on serving the profitable development of IPC Asia members. These opportunities enabled me to systematically participate in working with IPC at all levels from a global perspective. It can be said that the shared sense of mission and values led me to cooperate with IPC and enjoy it.

Continue reading this interview in Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO Show & Tell Magazine.