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The IPC Excellence in Education award is given to individuals who have made a significant contribution and demonstrated leadership in workforce development while building a culture of continuous learning within their organization and across the electronics industry.
Tabbatha Greek serves as the Master IPC Trainer for Honeywell Aerospace, where she runs a private IPC Training Center. She has been involved with manufacturing training for more than 15 years. Through her experience, she recognized that the industry needed a better way to bridge the skill-gap in electronics manufacturing. After discussing the issue with IPC, they began work on an introductory course written specifically for operators. Tabbatha continued collaborating with IPC to address the challenges that trainees face when they are new to the industry. Once IPC had released the new online Electronics Assembly Operator course, her team was the first to become certified and provided valuable feedback for further improvements on the Workforce Development Training series.
Patty Goldman: Tabbatha, congratulations on your award!
Tabbatha Greek: Thank you so much!
Goldman: IPC created a new award this year called Excellence In Education, and you are the first recipient, so that’s a big deal. What were your thoughts when John Mitchell gave you a call?
Greek: His administrative assistant contacted me and said that I needed to have a five-minute call with him. I thought, “Okay, what’s going on here?”
Goldman: Uh, oh.
Greek: When John told me about the award, I was stunned. He probably got off the call and thought, “She’s not excited about this at all,” but it all just seemed surreal.
Goldman: I understand. The award is given to individuals who have made a significant contribution and demonstrated leadership in workforce development and so forth. What is your involvement with IPC, and how long have you been working on this?
Greek: I became an IPC trainer in 2014. Our site was requiring several of the IPC CIS programs and our training department needed help transitioning our workforce over to the new training program. I was literally pulled out of the dark, as I was a test technician who worked in a darkroom all day. The IPC certification programs were completely new to me, so I was a bit intimidated. However, I found that teaching the programs that they have set up is fantastic because they are pre-packaged and consistent across the industry.
After I became a Master IPC Trainer, David Hernandez had contacted me and wanted to hear how things were going and what thoughts I had about the programs. Through those discussions I explained that living in a rural community, many we hire are new to the electronics industry. When we would put new hires through the CIS classes, there was an obvious skill gap that we were struggling to bridge with them because the courses are written for engineers. I asked David if there was any plan for foundational training that would give those new to the industry a baseline. The IPC team set to work to develop this amazing Workforce Development Training series. We had many calls about what problems we needed to resolve. The whole process was amazing since I had never had a business relationship with a company like that before.
To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the Real Time with... IPC APEX EXPO 2022 Show & Tell Magazine, click here.
