| dc.description.abstract | With the constant emergence of new electronic products, the global printed circuit board (PCB) market had reached 1.47 trillion dollars in 2010, making the PCB industry a global trillion-dollar industry. In 2011, Taiwan generated a higher PCB production value compared to Japan to become the biggest producer of PCB in the world. Our PCB industry is one of the few industries that hold an edge over Korean competitors and therefore plays a pivotal role among electronic industries. For PCB manufacturers, developing new production processes that lead to a higher yield rate at a lower cost is a key to their competitive advantage and profitability. Hence, R&D engineers are increasingly important in this industry.
This study investigated the required occupational competencies for R&D engineers in PCB industry to develop occupational competency standards and a occupational competency scale.
Based on the procedure of developing occupational competency standards suggested by ITRI College, the author first conducted a competency interview to compile a draft version of the occupational competency standards and invited experts to assess content validity of the data. After modification, a questionnaire titled “The Occupational Competency Scale for R&D Engineers in PCB Industry” was obtained. In the formal survey, 101 responses were collected. Data were analyzed using methods including descriptive statistics, reliability and validity tests, t-test, and one-way ANOVA.
Results showed that the occupational competencies of PCB R&D engineers could be divided into three dimensions, including “project planning”, “technical service”, and “cost reduction”. The three dimensions had an internal consistency ranging between .80 and .89, and the cumulative variance explained by the scale reached 70.694%. The occupational competency standards and scale were established.
From each dimension, this study also extracted the top three standards by importance, performance, and difference between standard and performance and further observed differences across demographic variables.
The occupational competency standards obtained in this study could be applied to recruitment of new employees, performance evaluation, and training. Schools and education training providers could also use them as a reference to help improve the human capital and competiveness of the PCB industry.
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