New IPC certification programme aids IP protection
15 May 2013
News
To help combat the growing threat of intellectual property theft and counterfeiting, IPC recently launched a certification programme that allows printed board manufacturers to demonstrate a commitment and ability to protect customers’ intellectual property and comply with industry best practices.
“The protection of intellectual property is very important to our industry, but until now was not uniformly defined,” said Michael Moisan, vice president of global technology, TTM Technologies. “IPC’s new Intellectual Property Protection Certification Programme is designed to help improve facilities’ programmes and ultimately get them certified to a universally recognised standard.”
Based on IPC-1071 ‘Best Practices for Intellectual Property Protection in Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing’, the certification programme is designed for commercial, industrial, military and other high-reliability markets, and was developed with input from OEMs, assembly companies and PCB manufacturers.
The certification process includes a facility audit based on a 130-question assessment examining the areas of physical facility security, IT security and compliance with regulations such as ITAR and EAR. The audit questionnaire covers specific categories correlated to the main categories in the IPC-1071 standard, including corporate policy, employee training, supply chain and vendor management, emergency procedures, destruction of scrap materials and more.
Participating organisations proceed through the certification process at their own pace and choose from three levels of audit, depending on whether they manufacture high-volume consumer goods, high-value goods or advanced goods for military and other high-security systems.
For more information visit www.ipc.org/ip-certification
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