Coming up to standard
12 February 2009
Quality standards are a key factor in customer satisfaction and the efficiency of any manufacturing operation. In a highly competitive market, contracts can be won or lost on the basis of whether companies can meet those standards.
Having engineers trained to IPC quality standards is recognised and valued throughout the electronics industry, and for some companies it is a pre-requisite of having any contract work carried out. As a result, companies are enlisting the expertise of tutors from IPC accredited training centres to deliver specialist training to improve processes and procedures.
The IPC association was founded in 1957 as the Institute for Printed Circuits. However, as more electronics assembly companies became involved in the association, the name was changed to the Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronics Circuits, although despite this, the initials IPC remain the formal name of the organisation.
The international organisation was formed by major global industrial companies including Boeing, NASA, Hewlett Packard, Raytheon, BAE Systems and Nokia, all of which recognised the need to ensure that sub-contractors’ quality is maintained at an appropriate worldwide level of standard classification. This standard is accepted by multinational OEMs, aerospace and defence contractors, along with many smaller electronics production companies.
Through its certified training centres, of which there are three in the UK, IPC offers a range of staff development programmes to meet these standards. The programmes are offered at two levels; the Application Specialist for staff who are, or will be, practitioners of the standard which includes quality staff line leaders, operational managers, assembly operators and design engineers. The other level is the Certified IPC Trainer level for instructors who are training staff to the operator or worker proficiency standard.
Many of the specialist staff development programmes cover soldering, product assembly, cable and wire harness assembly, rework of electronics assemblies, and repair and modification of printed boards.
According to Leeds-based Electronics Yorkshire – one of the UK’s IPC accredited training centres – its most popular IPC training course of the 12 courses it currently has available is the IPC A-610D Electronics Assemblies Application Specialist. This course provides candidates with detailed knowledge of the IPC 610 standard, so that it can be applied within a company’s production processes. The four-day course comprises of nine modules of instruction and familiarisation with the standard material; a standard which identifies the acceptable conditions for the manufacture of assemblies as laid down by the industry consensus documents of the IPC.
One company who has benefited from having operators trained to the IPC 610 standard is S2S Electronics Ltd in Huddersfield. Eleven of its engineering and production staff were trained by tutors at Electronics Yorkshire, as part of the S2S’s ongoing programme of raising quality awareness throughout its manufacturing processes. The standard has proved to be a major selling point with new customers as it has brought confidence in the company’s ability to provide quality products to one of the industry’s highest standards, according to Geoffrey Oughtibridge, Technical Manager at S2S.
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