The Importance of Becoming IPC Certified

When you choose to work in a career that has flight and life critical standards, you can expect the workforce credentials to include a high level of technical training, skilled qualifications, and experience within the workplace competencies. Along with technical knowledge one must develop the necessary skill sets to perform daily tasks with excellence.  One way to gain the high-value skills expected in the electronics industry is to have an IPC certification.

What is an IPC Certification?

IPC, formally called the Institute for Printed Circuits, is a global association for the electronic manufacturing industry. IPC Certification and Technical Training have set an industry standard for excellence among the electronics industry workforce. Quality assurance teams, top management and operators all seek to gain IPC certification credentials to gain training in a program where its course materials and hands-on certification activities are built around standards approved by the industry.  IPC offers a wide variety of technical, soldering, and rework training certification courses.  They are globally recognized and are valid for 2 years.  IPC offers two different certification levels- CIS and CIT.  Becoming IPC Certified in CIS or CIT makes you instantly more attractive to employers in the electronics industry. CIS and CIT explained below:

• CIS stands for Certified IPC Specialist and is considered the basic level of certification. Most common IPC CIS certification holders are production operators, engineers, and quality engineers. 
• CIT stands for Certified IPC Trainer. Employers delegate an employee to become CIT certified to train and certify production operators as CIS. 

The most common IPC certification courses are J-STD-001 (solder training), IPC-A-610 (acceptability to electronic assembly), IPC/WHMA-A-620 (cable and wire harness assemblies), and IPC-7711/7721 (rework and repair).

What Careers Benefit from IPC Certification?

The electronics industry has many specified careers that require some form of IPC Certification.  Two of the most common careers that require IPC Certification are medical and military defense.  In the medical field, operators who assist in building life critical medical devices may be required to solder parts.  In this case, it would be beneficial to have the J-STD-001 certification not only to learn to solder, but to receive the hands-on training.  Military defense industry works on a wide variety of life and flight critical devices and require operators to be IPC certified to design and build products within the industry standards.

How to get IPC Certified?

To become IPC certified, find an Authorized IPC Training Center (https://www.ipc.org/certification-centers) and request a quote for training. At EEI Training, we offer the following IPC training courses at CIT & CIS levels: J-STD-001 and Space Addendum: IPC-A-610, IPC/WHMA-A-620 and Space Addendum, and IPC-7711/7721.

For more information on the courses visit our website at /training/index.