ICAPE Group Welcomes Erik Pedersen as its Field Application Engineering and Quality Director

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ICAPE Group, the custom solutions provider to the Printed Circuit Boards and Technical Parts, congratulates Erik Pedersen on his new position as FAE and Quality Director. Erik Pederson has 33 years of experience, which will help him to co-create new technologies with customers and manage complex PCB projects. With ICAPE's worldwide program of webinars and tech-days including various PCB-related topics, Erik wants to continuously develop and transfer technical knowledge to ICAPE's customers and internally to its employees. 

Erik Pederson will manage a strong team of experienced FAE and Quality engineers. He stresses that communication is one of the cornerstones of improving customer relations. He will also be in charge of their local Quality team who, in close cooperation with the team in China and suppliers, constantly strives to optimize the customers’ quality experience. ICAPE Group offers a wide range of advanced PCB technologies like HDI, Flex, Rigid/Flex, RF/HF, IC substrate, etc. During Erik's career, he has worked with most PCB product types. He has been working with production, test & quality, pre-production engineering, PCB trading, sales, and FAE. He said that he will look forward to using this experience to support and advise customers to find the best possible solutions for their PCB design, stack-ups, raw material choices, signal integrity, special tolerances, or unusual applications in the final products.

Involving ICAPE FAE from the beginning of the project will enable customers to choose the right technology for the right application, which can help to save time and money and improve reliability. FAE is a support function for the sales and the customers. It facilitates the transfer of product knowledge and special demands, from the customer throughout the organization and suppliers. The FAE teams are in daily contact with the purchasing, sourcing, quality, engineering, and suppliers in China, to safeguard the projects from the development stage to the final product delivered to their customers.

According to Pederson, an FAE Director must have good knowledge about all technologies used and each process step to produce a PCB. Good communication skills are also a necessity to create links between all the actors in the manufacturing process. He must use his knowledge to adapt to constantly new situations and face new challenges and must learn fast and need to keep up to date with the technology and material developments. Nowadays, demands on the electronic market are constantly moving toward more powerful and compact designs, which brings a lot of challenges. He quoted, "We participate in the innovation - to find new solutions to new demands. To put a few words on the skills needed, I would emphasize Good Management skills, Creativity, Innovativeness, Motivator, and Strong Communicator."

The Target for Next 2 years

Basic PCB manufacturing has not changed much since the 80s. The Raw materials have improved, and a few new manufacturing processes have been developed, like Laser drilling, Laser direct imaging, and a few others. Today some suppliers can produce 30um Traces, 70um Laser drill holes, which would have been considered impossible 30 years ago. Erik wants to challenge and push the boundaries of PCB technologies. "I want to increase the PCB technology knowledge level in our organization through our internal technology training programs," he commented.

Erik also wishes to expand their external customer communication on webinars, tech days, and website content to increase their customer confidence in advanced & complex PCB Technology.