Editor's Note: This article was published in IPC Outlook this morning.

John Mitchell, IPC President: The Only Constant is Change

In today’s column, I wanted to provide a glimpse into some of the changes happening internally at IPC. After a thorough review, I have decided to reorganize the staff into new divisions to facilitate better service to our members. I’d like to share them with you.

How We Got Here (and Where is Here?)

When developing this approach, we turned to IPC’s mission:

IPC is a global trade association dedicated to furthering the competitive excellence and financial success of its members, who are participants in the electronics industry.

In pursuit of these objectives, IPC will devote resources to management improvement and technology enhancement programs, the creation of relevant standards, protection of the environment, and pertinent government relations.

IPC encourages the active participation of all its members in these activities and commits to full cooperation with all related organizations.

There are some significant ideas in the mission that we are striving to achieve: global trade association, success of the members, technology enhancement and government relations. These four concepts have translated into our four new divisions: Member Success (MS); Technology & Training (TT); Public Policy (PP); and International Relations (IR). Additionally, all of the support or back office activities will be grouped under Finance & Administration/Operations (OPs). As we are a global organization, where there is sufficient presence by IPC (as in China and the United States), local operations will have a similar structure, allowing IPC to function in a more uniform way globally.

10 Km (~30K Foot) View of Each Division

Let me share the high level intent of each division. First, Member Success is a group of functions that are focused on helping our members be more successful and taking an active role in helping them more fully benefit from their IPC membership. This group includes membership, member support, events and industry councils and market research. Alicia Balonek, now senior director of events, has been promoted and will take overall responsibility for IPC events, including trade shows and conferences. Member success will be led by a new vice president (open position).

Technology & Training will continue to work on standards, certification and training, and multimedia. TT is a critically important area that we will continue to enhance as it provides direct benefits to our members in terms of improved production quality and profitability and reduced rework. Dave Torp, vice president of standards and technology, will lead this group.

Public Policy will be based in Washington, D.C. and will coordinate with at least Brussels and Beijing (both to be developed in the near future). PP will keep our members informed of legislation and regulations that might impact their businesses and provide active leadership in promoting a science-based approach to new regulations. We plan to hire a new vice president of public policy.