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Weinhold: Well I think we have to go back a few years. The IEC standards were built around the national standards from Britain, Germany, and other countries. Then in the late 70s, IPC got involved and Dieter Bergman did an outstanding job at harmonizing the IEC and the IPC standards over many years. Now, we don't see this kind of harmonization any more, and it could lead to the point where these standards are drifting away from each other, which is not good for the industry in general. So new standards, for example IEC standards, are proposed by the Asian countries which represent approximately 90% of the global PCBs that are manufactured. So, we could easily lose leadership if we don't make an effort to harmonize these standards.
Starkey: I understand. Thank you, Michael. Alun, you have another EIPC conference coming up in the summer. Where will this be, and what will be the main focus?
Morgan: It will be in June in Berlin, I believe the 18th and 19th of June. We've organized a visit to the Fraunhofer Institute's new laboratory, which Michael visited in December last year. It is very impressive and has been totally rebuilt.
Starkey: This is where a lot of innovations originated, particularly in embedded component technology.
Morgan: Absolutely. Professor Lang has been really instrumental in bringing these advancements on. And they have really an extremely comprehensive laboratory there, especially in terms of signal integrity testing, which is another theme that we're very interested in following. So I think we will certainly have that as a major theme. We chose Berlin for two primary reasons. One, it's easily accessible. It's also in Germany, which is where, say, 47% of the PCBs in Europe are made, so this is a good location for the local market. And secondly, we were able to get the visit with Fraunhofer, which is going to mean so much to our organization and to our industry over the years. It's brought many, many projects out of the research laboratories into really practical applications, and I think that's something we should be very grateful for.
Starkey: Alun and Michael, it's been nice to talk to you. Thank you very much indeed for your time. Have an enjoyable show and have a successful next EIPC conference.
Video from EIPC Winter Conference, Munich 2015
