About IPC

Since 1957, IPC—Association Connecting Electronics Industries® has been guiding the electronic interconnection industry through its dramatic changes. A global trade association dedicated to the competitive excellence and financial success of its more than 3,100 member companies, IPC represents all facets of the industry, including design, printed circuit board manufacturing, electronics assembly and test.

As a member-driven organization and leading source for industry standards, training, market research and public policy advocacy, IPC supports programs to meet the needs of an estimated $2.02 trillion global electronics industry.

IPC employs approximately 75 staff in the U.S., 30 staff in China, more than 5 staff in India one European representative based in Sweden, and one Russian representative in Moscow. IPC offices:

IPC Board of Directors

What's in a Name? … A Whole Lot of History

IPC was founded in 1957 as the Institute for Printed Circuits. As more electronics assembly companies became involved with the association, the name was changed to the Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits. By the 1990s, most people in the industry could not remember the full name and/or didn't agree on what the words in the name meant. So in 1999, the organization's name was changed to IPC.

The IPC name is often accompanied by an identity statement — Association Connecting Electronics Industries. The IPC Board of Directors selected this statement as the perfect complement to the IPC name because it expresses the organization's mission of networking and technical exchange as well as emphasizes the importance of the printed circuit board.

IPC 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 manufacturing industry.

In pursuit of these objectives, IPC devotes 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.

Importance of Industry Standards

As the former Chairman of Intel Craig R. Barrett described, "The world is getting smaller on a daily basis. Hardware, software and content move independent of, and irrespective of, international boundaries. As that increasingly happens, the need to have commonality and interoperability grows. You need standards so that the movie made in China or India plays in the equipment delivered in the United States.

"When you have common interfaces, common protocols, then everyone can innovate and everyone can interoperate. Companies can build their businesses, consumers can expand their choices, the technology moves forward faster, and users get more benefit."

IPC is accredited by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as a standards-setting organization. The process to create voluntary IPC standards is guided by ANSI's principles of consensus, due process and openness and depends heavily upon data gathering and collaboration among a diverse range of stakeholders. The Institute ensures that access to the standards process, including an appeals mechanism, is made available to anyone directly or materially affected by a standard that is under development.

In order to maintain ANSI accreditation, IPC is required to consistently adhere to a set of requirements or procedures known as ANSI Essential Requirements: Due process requirements for American National Standards, that govern the consensus development process.

Hundreds of electronics manufacturing companies, government agencies and other industry organizations are represented through the voluntary contributions of their staffs who contribute their expertise and time to standards development. Even more individuals participate in the standards development process through comments to draft documents.

The ANSI process adopted by and customized for the electronic interconnect industry is available in the document, Standardization Process of the IPC. Find out more about IPC committees on IPC's committee home pages and about the documents currently in development in the status of standardization.

About IPC Membership Video