Whatever Happened to TPIC?

The short answer is that the Technician Performance Improvement Council (TPIC) was officially dissolved during the fall of 2008 by its Board of Directors with the intention of establishing a new professional association of technical trainers in high tech industries. However, the current recession, as it gathered momentum throughout 2008, forced the individuals on the Board of Directors to focus on more pressing matters in their own companies. As it stands, there is no TPIC. There is no replacement group. And activity on initiating a new group has reportedly drifted down to zero.

TPIC was born as the Technician Training Council (TTC) in 1992 under the auspices of SEMATECH and its then partner SEMI-SEMATECH. The Council (Board of Directors) was made up of representatives from several chip manufacturers, equipment suppliers, and SEMATECH. The focus was a three day annual conference which consisted of presentations on non-proprietary, exemplary training ideas and activities. The conference also initiated task forces that looked at a variety of topics like “Instructor Guidelines” and “Training Evaluation Guidelines.” Subsequent conferences considered the reports and adopted “Guidelines.”

At some point in the late 1990s, the organization adopted a new name, the Technician Performance Improvement Council (TPIC), reflecting the idea that training was but one of a variety of performance interventions. The name change reflected the reality that actually existed from the beginning: the TTC had already introduced guest speakers, presenters, and task forces on interventions like “Documentation,” “Electronic Performance Support Systems,” “Knowledge Management.”

In by 2002, the sponsorship of TPIC had shifted from primarily that of SEMATECH to primarily that of SEMI. In the late summer of 2003, SEMI withdrew its funding. Existing leaders in the TPIC organization scrambled to come up with a new funding formula that would allow TPIC to continue its work. The result was an ambitious plan that included the employment of a part time Director. There were two types of membership, but one source of funding: corporate memberships (about $1500 per year) and individual memberships (free, in conjunction with a membership in the American Society for Training and Development - ASTD). It was a hard sell and corporate memberships were few. There was not enough money for the most basic expenses, never-mind for its part time Director.

The TTC began as a fully funded program (from SEMATECH) to which participants paid nothing but related travel expenses. Participation declined when in later years TPIC charged a conference fee. By 2006, participation was steadily dropping. There will always be a difference of opinions about why this was true. Among the contributing views: (a) Board members largely depended on the actions of a paid Director while there was little money by which to pay him, (b) Getting corporations to join and pay the fee was impossible given the economic conditions, the nebulous name of “TPIC,” lack of effective marketing, and/or an industry less prone to cooperative actions (compared to the late 1980s), (c) Participants had different visions of how the organization should evolve which resulted in less focused marketing, less passion for the group, more time lost, and/or (d) Task force activity related to performance improvement had begun to shift from TPIC sponsored groups to SEMI Standards sponsored groups causing further dilution of focus for TPIC. In the end, as was stated at the opening, the gathering recession of 2008 caused the few remaining advocates for TPIC (and a new replacement organization) to abandon all activity to focus fully on the concerns of their own company.

TPIC made invaluable contributions to the semiconductor industry. The original task forces established the essential PBET characteristics which were embodied in the PBET Workshop, created by Julian Serda in 1994 at SEMATECH. In turn, all companies in the industry have benefited as Intel leveraged the Workshop as a way to improve training with its vendors. Beyond “PBET,” there were many other areas where participants learned new ideas for training or other aspects of technical support that brought overall improvements to the industry. On a personal level, many of us benefited from the networking afforded by work on task forces, attendance at the annual conferences, and later on, through site visits to various corporate training centers.

TPIC also was a major contributor to national improvements in semiconductor manufacturing technician skills through collaborations with community college instructors, and later, through collaboration with MATEC.

Over the years, there were a number of products: task force reports, adopted Guidelines, and stellar presentations. None of these things are available any longer through the abandoned TPIC website. However, I have some of these materials and will be posting them in an online archive, available to all.

Although other wonderful organizations exist, like the ASTD and the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), these groups give only a very small degree of attention to high tech equipment training. You, the equipment trainer, must sift out what is relevant from presentations on sales training, software training, management training, and other concerns. I will miss those wonderful presentations in TPIC meetings gone by that actually demonstrated manufacturing equipment simulations, field service technical support systems, and other specific examples needed by equipment trainers. I look forward to working with anyone who wants to band together again to promote excellence in equipment training. If you have an interest in working with others to form a Technical Training Association, please let me know so that I can put you in touch with other like-minded people who are working on this.

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