Design Community Town Hall Review 

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

There’s been a lot of work going on at IPC related to PCB design training and education. This week, many new members of IPC’s design groups met up in person at IPC APEX EXPO.

The Design Community Town Hall took place on the afternoon of April 10, 2024. I was fortunate to attend this event, which marked an opportunity for members of some newly found design groups to get together and exchange ideas. Peter Tranitz, senior director of solutions for IPC, opened the session with a slide presentation introducing these new groups and members within the solutions department.

The Design Leadership Council includes 14 members:

Steve Watt (Zuken), Steven Roy (Optimum Design Associates), Dale Lee (Plexus), Pietro Vergine (Leading Edge), Savita Ganjigatti (Sienna ECAD Technologies), Thomas Romant (IPC Designers Council France), Ellefen Jiang (NCAB), Kevin Kusiak (Lockheed Martin), Susan Kayesar (Siemens), Jesus Castane (MBDA), John Watson (Altium), Igor Bulavitchi (Flex), Flayover Guo, and Huseyin Ariac. 

The Global IPC Internal Design Team (GIDT) includes 16 members:

Matt Kelly (Sponsor), Mike Milostan (Marketing), Barry Matties (I-Connect007), Andy Shaughnessy (I-Connect007), Carlos Plaza (Education), Teresa Rowe (Standards), Kelly Scanlon (Sustainability), John Perry (Standards), Peter Tranitz (Initiative Coordinator), Patrick Crawford (Standards), Francisco Fourcade (Standards), Andres Ojalill (Standards), Kris Moyer (Education), Lorena Villanueva (Mexico), Shine Yang (China/Asia), and Saurabh Saxena (India).

These new groups are poised to tackle a variety of challenges as IPC pivots to fill gaps in the design and manufacturing knowledge pool due to the ongoing retirement of our senior subject matter experts. 

Tranitz then extended “kudos” to these group members. He emphasized that their “1,000 years of combined knowledge” will come in handy as the groups work and collaborate going forward. He emphasized the need to address critically needed updates in educational training programs as well as design and manufacturing standards and guidelines.

The second half of the meeting included a panel discussion moderated by Susan Kayesar, product manager for PCBflow at Siemens. The panel focused on some soon-to-be published white papers on several key design topics involving CAD data, DFM and stakeholder usage and accessibility. The event wrapped up with a rousing Q&A session. PCB designers and design engineers in the audience were not shy about sharing their opinions.

If you’re a subject matter expert on PCB design, consider getting involved with IPC’s design teams. They will welcome you with open arms, and you’ll probably learn something along the way.