A Conversation with IPC President and CEO John Mitchell

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

A few weeks ago I was able to sit down with John Mitchell, president and CEO of IPC, to discuss the organization and where we are going as an industry. We discussed IPC’s four aspirational goals—standards, education, advocacy and solutions—as well as short-term goals. We also talked a bit about going virtual and becoming paperless.

Patty Goldman: John, could you start by giving readers the background on IPC.

John Mitchell: IPC serves the entire global electronics industry supply chain. And we represent all facets of the industry from design to materials, boards, assembly and test, and the suppliers along that chain. We’re really trying to meet the needs of this whole industry value chain and the various segments as well, whether it’s aerospace, defense, military, medical, automotive, consumer electronics, telecommunications, etc. Overall, we’re trying to make sure our member
companies achieve success. We do that by focusing on four goals. It’s easy to remember because the acronym spells SEAS: S-E-A-S. The first “S” is for standards. IPC is known around the world for our standards. We continue to try to make our standards even better. Many people have this mistaken notion that IPC creates standards, but we don’t. IPC manages the development process. It’s really all of the industry that creates standards. To note however, annually, IPC publishes dozens of new and revised standards in areas from printed board design and intellectual property protection through box build. Our collection of industry guidelines and standards exceeds 300 active standards and our resource library contains more than a 1,000.

Read the full interview here.

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the December 2015 issue of The PCB Magazine