• Looking at Legacy: Proactively managing the risk of counterfeit components

    Looking at Legacy: Proactively managing the risk of counterfeit components

    In general, defense sustainment and counterfeit avoidance has been left to DMSMS teams and logistics or engineering tactics.  However, so far the solution has primarily been to develop standards, authentication and anti-counterfeit technologies.  These responses have been critical, but have largely remained reactive and have not produced the dynamic collaboration crucial to maintaining a healthy, proactive supply chain.  Instead, each player is left facing inward — focusing on solutions from their own particular positions in the supply chain — but without the resources to truly be proactive.

  • DNA tagging: A post production anti-counterfeit solution?

    DNA tagging: A post production anti-counterfeit solution?

    No matter what your opinion; DNA tagging is currently one of the top methods being discussed to ensure component authentication.  The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) even issued a Request for Information on the subject.

    Unfortunately, due to the costs projected and associated with DNA tagging and authentication, few businesses appear to be looking forward to the prospect.

    At first glance DNA tagging, like many of the industry’s current solutions, makes sense:  increase the complexity of the marks so that counterfeiters are unable reproduce it. DNA would be a “tag” both difficult and expensive to try and recreate.  However, DNA tagging and many of the solutions being proposed are “point forward” solutions that, in order to be truly effective, would need to be implemented at the component manufacturing level, not once parts have left the factory floor.

  • Cutting Electronic Waste out of the Counterfeit Supply Chain

    Cutting Electronic Waste out of the Counterfeit Supply Chain

    According to the EPA, although electronic waste (or sometimes known as “e-waste”) is less than 10% of the current solid waste stream, it is growing 2-3 times faster than any other waste stream.   In 2005 an estimated 26-37 million computers became obsolete and the Consumer Electronics Association reported that roughly 304 million electronics—were removed from US households.

    E-waste impacts the international community in many ways.  New innovations in industrial and commercial technology have forced obsolescence in equipment like computers, mobile phones and televisions, and refrigerators.  As consumers keep up with changing trends, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) estimates that 20-50 million metric tons of e-waste are generated each year and much of this electronic waste gets shipped overseas to developing areas in Asia, Africa, and South America.

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