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Virginia is for (PCB) Lovers: Weidmuller USA Celebrating 50 Years in Virginia
November 18, 2024 | Linda Stepanich, IPCEstimated reading time: 1 minute
The Weidmuller Group, a provider of Smart Industrial Connectivity products and solutions, is a family-owned company founded in 1850 in Germany. It currently operates sites in more than 80 countries. Weidmuller USA, based in Richmond, Virginia, and celebrating 50 years in 2025, plans to open an engineering and production facility this fall, bringing more jobs to the region.
One of the employees instrumental in ensuring Weidmuller USA’s strength in the industry is Phil Dobler, director of operations, who brought IPC standards to the company. When he began his tenure 28 years ago, Phil found many experienced staff members but none with formal assembly training. Weidmuller’s Engineering and Assembly Services, a value-added service operating out of the Richmond office, assembles, produces, and distributes its products based on customer specifications, and meeting those needs requires consistency in production. For his staff to succeed, Phil realized they needed a more consistent and structured approach to their work.
Phil says he looked for “easy-to-use standards with some training, which could be implemented to enhance our performance. We also wanted guidelines on what is acceptable and not acceptable. We found that with IPC right away.”
He quickly noticed that the production process, which had previously received complaints resulting in returns and rework, saw a large reduction in criticism after the staff underwent training.
“We saw our number of customer complaints fall right off the table; now it is very rare that we get a complaint,” Phil says. “Using the IPC training videos was a huge help; knowing what is acceptable and what is not has benefited our assemblers greatly. We went from no formal training to customers wanting assembly to IPC-A-610, and we could find common talking points with our customers, which made it all easier. We were glad to incorporate IPC into our shop and quality procedures.”
Read this rest of this artice in the Fall 2024 issue of IPC Community.
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