A modern, high-volume electronics manufacturer will use components from multiple countries and suppliers. This has advantages including cost efficiency and safeguarding supply volumes to ensure production targets can always be met, even in an uncertain world.
Valuable as these benefits are, they cannot come at the expense of quality and reliability. Supply chain management is a critical aspect of quality assurance and risk management.
Effective supply chain management translates directly into electronic assemblies and devices that perform as expected over the entire product lifecycle.
Vetting suppliers and their quality systems is vital. It’s not a cheap or easy thing to do with the level of rigour needed to source components for high reliability markets. And even a tightly managed supply chain needs the added safeguard of meticulous inspection and testing. That way only fully compliant, genuine components enter production.
Spotting the Counterfeits
Counterfeit electronic components are a growing problem in what’s now a truly global marketplace. Some counterfeits are easily spotted from the quality of the packaging. Errors in logos or holographic security features, for example, are obvious giveaways.
Electrical tests and X-ray inspection add a further safeguarding layer for less obvious fakes. ‘Blacktopping’ re-marks lower quality components to look like ones that would be suitable for high reliability markets. These components might even conform with production tests, only to fail prematurely in service.
Thankfully, our robust supply chain management systems mean that we see few, if any, counterfeits.
End-to End Traceability
Even with certified, genuine components from known suppliers you can’t assume compliance with performance and reliability requirements. Our total traceability and data logging regime ensures we can track every component back to the supplier and batch.
Should issues be identified in final assembly testing we can quickly isolate a batch of components and identify any assemblies that may be fitted with components from the same source.
Supply chain management is one feature of our AS 9100 certified production and testing regime. If you’re interested in learning more about modern electronics manufacturing for high reliability markets access our free resource centre to find out more.
