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A French Design Community
August 21, 2024 | Michelle Te, IPC CommunityEstimated reading time: 1 minute
The French IPC Designers Council is a unique conglomerate of 250 members from all parts of the industry: EEs, designers, CAD engineers, PCB manufacturers, EMS suppliers, OEMs, and even some in component packaging, that encourages individuals to freely exchange their design issues without commercial considerations.
Thomas Romont, a PCB manufacturer’s rep with more than 20 years of experience, especially in the design for manufacturing (DFM) process, leads this association with support from IPC. “Design is particularly complex because it involves all electronics disciplines, from the electronics technician to the user, including manufacturing and testing. It is not easy to bring all these people together around the same table and get them to discuss and understand each other,” he says.
In his conversations with fellow PCB designers Mike Creeden and Gary Ferrari about seven years ago, they discussed existing design chapters in North America and the social networking and support those chapters offered.
“Noting that there were no such councils in Europe, or in France where I live, I asked Pierre-Jean Albrieux, CEO of IFTEC, if he was ready to support me in creating a French chapter,” Thomas says. With IFTEC’s support, Thomas organized a design conference that dealt with the difficulties of the design profession and the solutions that IPC could provide.
During the conference, he outlined his intention to create a French-speaking IPC designers council. “This initiative was extremely well received by the assembly and some people even offered to create a board to steer the creation of this new association,” Thomas says.
Read the rest of this article in the Summer 2024 issue of IPC Community.
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