Interview with John Mitchell, President and CEO of APEX/IPC 2019.

Sanjay Gangal interviewed John Mitchell, President and CEO of APEX/IPC 2019.

SG: How is IPC show been going?

JM:: IPC Apex Expo has been going great, we're very excited. Those exhibitors here have been having a great show, doing a lot of great business, selling product. The standards committee meetings have been going on since Saturday, will go for all the way through Saturday and then we have many different education programs going on in our professional development segment as well, and the attendance has been off the charts. It's been great.

SG: Tell us about some of the education programs and certificate programs that IPC has launched?

JM:: Last year we relaunched Edge 2.0, which has improved the system remarkably in helping it be better to use in terms of a user interface, et cetera. And then this year, we are launching some new programs we're working with the industry on our job task analysis committee, to understand exactly what the skills are that new operators or existing operators could use to better perform in their jobs, and so we're working on developing those certificate programs this year.

SG: How are the standards committee is coming along.

JM:: This is probably the most highly attendant standards committee event of the year, and so it's been wonderful. We have all the committee chairs have been engaged, and we're rolling out our new system called IPC works, that will allow them to interact better in the future, online and globally. So that they don't have to all try to come to one event or two events or three events a year, they can interact on a monthly or even weekly basis, to make sure that the standards work goes forward. So it's been wonderful.

SG: Any particularly new standards that you want to talk about?

JM:: Probably the big announcement, it also ties to the show is the CFX (Connected Factory Exchange), IPC's industry 4.0 standard, the connected factory exchange standard – balloted and passed with unanimous voting, which was great. And it will be launched here in a couple of weeks, it will be available for public availability. And here at the show they actually have two separate CFX lines. Last year, we did a virtual demo of it. This year you have two real lines. One of them is actually producing real goods right here at the show.

SG: That is pretty cool. Now, and you also have an educational foundation, can you tell us about that?

JM:: That's right. So separate to IPC, we formed the IPC Education Foundation. Well IPC we were involved in standards, education, advocacy and solution for those in the industry, the Education Foundation is really targeting those who are not yet in the industry, high school students, college students, et cetera, providing them scholarships, credentialed education as well, so that they can really understand how valuable and what this industry is all about, and really trying to help fill that skills gap, and that workforce challenge that so many of our members are facing in trying to find good skilled labor.

SG: Can you tell us anything about the show itself here?

JM:: I believe we have somewhere around 450 exhibitors this year. We'll be in San Diego again next year in 2020. So far those that I've talked with on the show have been having great success. The traffic has been super high here, and so we're excited and we're confident everybody will have… I'm hopeful we'll have yet another record year which we had last year so we'll see how it goes.

SG: What are the latest industry trends you are seeing?

JM:: A lot of concerns in terms of trends. There are some concerns about the whole tariff thing, and how that will challenge the supply chain, so supply chain is definitely an issue that the industry is seeing. And then of course, cost of goods, if you have a single supplier and they're subject to those that can really impact your business. So those are probably some of the primary areas of concern that we're seeing out there.

SG: Okay. And what is the best way for people to find out more about IPC on the internet?

JM:: On the internet if you want to find out more about IPC obviously ipc.org, go to our main website as well. Or on the foundation it's ipcef.org. Through that you can find out more information about your… Through to the ipc.org's website, you can get information on how to get involved in a committee. If you have a question about a standard, you can go there and find out who the chair is, and be able to contact them and work with them directly to make sure that your organization understands everything there is to need to know about the standards or get involved and try to bring some data and affect some change if you feel that's necessary as well.

Tags: CFX, IPC, John Mitchell

Category: IPC

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