The Initial Prevention to be More Important in Supply Chain Management

For all difficulties whether the serve economic malaise or a small math problem, the handling ways usually gains more traction than the cause. This principle also goes for supply chain management.

Driven by the technology development, products and electronic components increasingly shortening lifecycle has become an inevitable fact. OEM, EMS, ODM and buyers all are taking strategy and measures, issuing EOL, making a prediction to lifetime, seeking out obsolete or end-of-life components from a source…

Despite the carefulness, bogus parts are still available to buyers, who have to face the risks of sales decline, publicity damage, cost impact and even customer security if the products equipped with counterfeit enter market; even if they have a pre-examination toward the procured components, the continuing escalation of counterfeit products still such generates bad results as lagging-behind in market timing, cost of human resources. So let’s pay more attention to the beginning prevention from fake products coming to our supply chain.

The following are measures buyers can take in the first step of avoiding all problems brought by counterfeit parts:

Form a long-term business relation with reliable distributors whose products can trace to original manufacturers. Since ancient times, comparing is the principle prevailing in all commercial activities. Quality contrast, especially price comparison decides all competitions and customer’s wandering among different suppliers. In fact, it is the hesitation that gives opportunities to bogus products which show much lower price. In order to stop larger loss and save time, few even only one reliable and long-term distributor for parts, especially obsolete components is enough. In addition, long-term cooperator enables providing discount.

For counterfeit fighting, a buyer’s power is too small to make a difference, but then how about a hundred buyers, a thousand…? They can unite to require governments to issue law or regulation to punish those manufacturers producing counterfeit products or strengthen the examination of production activities for the consideration of market environment, customer security, and the quality of aerospace, medical and military industry.

Of course, this is a long way and battle. But if there is no the first step, how should the second step stride out? Currently, it seems only the Unites States has started the process. Due to national security issues, the US Department of Defense (DoD) in late March updated the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, which undoubtedly is an important step for counterfeit prevention. We can long for more similar regulations across the globe moving toward more products.

As a fact of matter, government can do more than buyers, including establishing and improving the nationwide integrity mechanisms, integrating supply chain…