As many of you know I have a fondness for electronics born of my avionics and electronic warfare background and experience, so the subject matter herein always commands my attention, as it should for you too since so many of you either sell assemblies with electronic/electrical components in them or sell the individual electronic/electrical components themselves. In this article we’ll review:

• Definition of counterfeit.
• Who is ERAI?
• The data.
• The new Quality Standards being flowed down to suppliers specifically target these parts with detection, reporting, and mitigation measures.

DEFINITIONS OF COUNTERFEIT:

• Counterfeit Material: Fraudulent materiel that has been confirmed to be a copy, imitation or substitute that has been represented, identified, or marked as genuine, and/or altered by a source without legal right with intent to mislead, deceive or defraud.

• AS9120 defines it as: “An unauthorized copy, imitation, substitute, or modified part (e.g., material, part, component), which is knowingly misrepresented as a specified genuine part of an original or authorized manufacturer.
  •  NOTE: Examples of a counterfeit part can include, but are not limited to, the false identification of marking or labeling, grade, serial number, date code, documentation, or performance characteristics.”

WHO IS ERAI?

Founded in 1995, ERAI, Inc. is a global information services organization that monitors, investigates, and reports issues affecting the global electronics supply chain. As the industry’s leading source of risk assessment tools, ERAI provides exclusive services and in-depth information that enable its members to perform industry-specific risk mitigation on suspect counterfeit, high-risk, and non-conforming parts and identify problematic suppliers and customers.¹

I follow ERAI on LinkedIn², so I tend to keep up with their data on the topic. The latest for the complete year of 2023 was recently posted³ which is being shared herein.

THE DATA:

A very telling graph of the total number reported against total sales.

What parts are affected?

NEW QUALITY STANDARDS BEING FLOWED DOWN TO SUPPLIERS WHICH SPECIFICALLY TARGET THESE PARTS WITH MITIGATION MEASURES:

Notice that these (see below) are all AS numbered for Aerospace Standards. Suppliers who these are being flowed down to are either being asked to implement them with full accreditation, or to be compliant with key aspects. I’ve audited a company who was fully accredited to one of these and worked with another to write compliant procedures for limited aspects. Both are ASA-100 accredited as well.

With certainty the data covers the broadest cross section of different industries, but as can be seen in the AS Standards, Aerospace is taking positive action to mitigate the phenomenon. The DoD has taken a well-founded alarmist view of this, and a Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing was held to herald the issues. The trouble is that the data seems to show that the activity continues unabated except for the dips in reports during the Covid period. Here are recent press releases reflective of this disturbing activity.^{4, 5}

This article was written without the use of AI generated content.

Over ‘n out

Roy Resto

www.AimSolutionsConsulting.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/royresto/

1: https://www.erai.com/aboutus_profile

2- https://www.linkedin.com/groups/3758841/

3- https://www.erai.com/erai_blog/3183/_2023_annual_report

4- https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/man-pleads-guilty-selling-35m-counterfeit-and-deficient-electronics-use-military-systems

5- https://www.nj.com/monmouth/2024/05/ceo-gets-6-years-for-selling-counterfeit-equipment-that-ended-up-on-fighter-jets.html