George,

Thank you very much for shedding some light on an important, to us all,
subject. Sure glad, for us all, you stick around though you're obviously
thought of as much more than a board person.

As for my experiences, and some of my friends in the business, I used to get
mostly "up front" consulting jobs. Now, I get mostly "fix it" type work. I'm
not complaining but, as you said, there seems a new way of designing,
fabricating, and assembling product.

The two examples, of my supplier base that's been with me for years, are
good examples of concurrent engineering staffs. Sanmina Hadco, in its
Haverhill tech center, still has this capability and I desparately hope it
continues but, with the closure of its assembly tech center in Austin, I
have to wonder if the pendulum is swinging back to "traditional" sales
techniques (used car type approach).

Though still providing good product, some of the other PCB technical
"giants" don't talk technical anymore. They and many assembly houses talk
the talk of sales folks mostly telling us/me what we/I want to hear. What
they don't understand is I want to hear technical content with their ability
to back it up.

As much as I love my favorite board shop, PE, I have had few in depth
technical discussions with them. As one example, I requested
photomicrographs to accompany slugs before and after thermal stress to
visually confirm their report. I was asked, when questioning why no pics
were avaialable, as very nice sales lady, apparently, asked "what is
photomicrographs?"

I recognize my client's management, as many other companies, have limited
knowledge concerning PCB's. That, in my opinion, is whay they should look
for folks having up front approaches to preventing defect, through DFM/CE,
at the design level.

As you say, we need more good young engineers having the knowledge, talent,
desire, and ability to do this ever more important job as the technical
world gets more complex. I sure look back on a different world, but don't we
all. Was it any better, I think so when it came to PCB's.

Earl

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d
To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in
the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet
To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL
To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest
Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives
Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm for additional
information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------