/20.06.2025/
The production of cable harnesses is a demanding process. For lower volumes automation is limited and often not feasible, which means that the knowledge of the human specialists is crucial. With this in mind, we at Howag have been training and certifying our cable specialists under the IPC 620 standard – not just for a couple of years, but for decades. Our theoretical courses are backed up with practical hands-on training: illustrating 1 to 1 critical cases and best practices. The cable confection specialists at Howag aim to always keep up with the latest, top-level technology, and Howag has invested hundreds of hours in training.
And what does IPC mean? It is well-known in the cable production industry that the Institute for Printed Circuits (IPC) is a global association which helps manufacturers (OEMs, EMS, PCB manufacturers, cable and wire harness manufacturers and electronics industry suppliers) to build their products better.
The IPC 620 standard describes materials, methods, tests and acceptability criteria for producing crimped, mechanically secured and soldered interconnections, and the related assembly activities associated with production of the final cable and harness assemblies.
The IPC 610 standard is the most widely used standard published by the IPC, and it describes the visual acceptance criteria for electronic products.
Howag has been an active member of the IPC association for many years. Every Howag Group Company – in Switzerland, Bulgaria and China – has its own certified IPC Trainers.
In the course of the last few years, we realised something very important: that the miniaturisation and integration of PCBs and electronic components is becoming more and more common within the traditional cable harness design.
So, in the beginning of 2025 Howag started a new chapter: we introduced our first IPC 610 in-house training courses. Ms. Nina Petrova, a very talented Production Team-leader for one of our key customers, mentioned: “The course is very useful and gives you good understanding why some operations have to be performed in a certain way – and not in any other way”. Nina obtained her first IPC Certificate exactly 10 years ago.
Mr. Stanislav Lazarov, our IPC-Trainer, is satisfied with the first IPC 610 courses: “all participants already had very good practical expertise – so it was easy to build the bridge to the theory”. As our “Master in Soldering”, he is very competent in this sphere and is his skills are competitive on an international level.
Howag will continue to invest in the training of our cable specialist, and the trainings for the next time period are already planned.
