A Practical way to Limit Counterfeits

The traditional methods of addressing the risk of counterfeits have been viewed as purely a cost to the business that was better than the alternatives. Historically, the risks of counterfeits using traditional methods have been reasonably sufficiently addressed by traditional Quality, Supply Chain Management, better labeling & packaging, statistical sampling, and security measures, as well as, analytical techniques such as Real Time X-Ray, various forms of microscopy, and chemical analysis. As counterfeiters have accumulated more resources, they have been able to rapidly find increasingly more sophisticated methods around the relatively static methods of preventing and finding counterfeits. The effectiveness of the methods traditionally used to mitigate the risk of counterfeits such as security guards, locked containers, using known suppliers, etc. have been less than 100% effective and very costly to implement and maintain. This paper outlines a more modern method of enhancing the traditional analytical techniques, and creates a value-added method that by blending existing tools for Quality, Reliability, Product Safety, Regulatory, Product Development, Marketing, Leadership, and Operations, works more productively, with less effort. The methodology shown in IPC-1782 can be applied to products outside of the Electronics Industry including, but not limited to, medical devices, automobiles, food, appliances, etc. Because these are off-the-shelf solutions, they are relatively easily implemented and provide unprecedented controls and productivity gains over every part of a business. Variability causes quality, reliability (quality over time), and product safety issue. Interchangeable parts enabled the industrial revolution because they addressed variability. What gets measured tends to get managed. This combination of tools enables a tailorable solution that is proportionate to the need and available resources. This combination of tools also enables a reduction in variability that is on the same order of magnitude as interchangeable parts. Therefore, this solution fits very well with Industry 4.0 and can be utilized to create entirely new business models, as well as, a practical way to address the risk of counterfeits for a very long time.