The New Chapter: The Benefits of Continuing Education
It’s Only Common Sense: You’ve Got to Hustle
Battling Counterfeit Electronics in Manufacturing
October 7, 2024 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Paul Jarski, product development manufacturing leader at Case New Holland (CNH), discusses his extensive experience with counterfeit electronics throughout his career. He highlights the challenges faced during market allocations, where counterfeit parts infiltrated supply chains and causing significant issues. Paul recounts the rigorous processes implemented to detect and prevent counterfeits, including advanced material analysis and testing. Counterfeit parts occasionally slipped through despite these measures, leading to costly and time-consuming audits and verifications to ensure product integrity and safety.
Nolan Johnson: Paul, tell me a little about your background.
Paul Jarski:
Paul Jarski: I currently work with large and compact tractors at CNH. I’m the liaison between the product development and manufacturing organizations.
Prior to this role, I’ve spent most of my career in agricultural technology, both with CNH and other companies. With the advances in farming technology, the development of rugged electronics equipment has been and continues to be a critical part of the business.
Johnson: So, you have an extensive background in managing counterfeiting issues.
Jarski: Yes. For most of my career, I have been involved in the manufacturing, quality, and supply chain portions of the AG electronics business. I started my career in this area as a process/quality engineer as a liaison between my company and EMS providers. We'd get a product stable and move it to the EMS provider. We still owned the design and controlled everything in the BOM, the AML.
We all know the electronics industry goes through allocations every three to four years. When that happened, we looked for parts. We went to the broker market if we couldn’t get them through normal chains.
I remember some of the first brokered parts we bought in the mid-2000s. After the 2008 economic meltdown, everybody in the electronics industry had slashed their capacity. For the ag industry, it was a blip. In the space of a year, we went from building at 100% capacity to cutting production to going all out and needing to increase equipment capacity. When everybody in the electronics component industry had cut capacity, we had to go to the broker market to find components. However, we also realized the inherent danger in this approach, so we knew we had to be careful of what we purchased.
When we purchased components from the secondary (broker) market, we started implementing checks to verify authenticity. I remember clearly some of the first counterfeits. As soon as they came in, we suspected something was wrong. The labels were poorly printed on the reels, the silk screening on the physical parts wasn't spelled correctly, and you could rub the labeling off the part. I remember us throwing some samples in the X-ray, only to find there was nothing inside. We saw a lot of crude stuff. If you had an X-ray and a cotton swab with acetone, you could tell if it was a counterfeit.
Fast forward to the next market allocation in the 2013-14 timeframe and we found that counterfeiters had advanced their game significantly.
To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the October 2024 issue of SMT007 Magazine, click here.
Share on:
Suggested Items
American Made Advocacy: Success in Washington Requires Patience, Persistence, and Sustained Focus
12/17/2024 | Shane Whiteside -- Column: American Made AdvocacyThis was a great year for the ongoing advocacy efforts for the PCB industry. Our numbers tell the story. PCBAA membership topped 65, we have more than 5,000 followers on social media, generated 450 social media posts, had more than 50 Capitol Hill meetings with members and staff, influenced PCB legislation, held our largest annual meeting to date, placed 12 opinion editorials in major publications across the country, and participated in four industry trade shows.
From Construction Work to PCB Design in Under a Year
11/27/2024 | Andy Shaughnessy, Design007 MagazineAt the Anaheim Electronics & Manufacturing Show in October, I had the opportunity to talk with some new PCB designers, including Jon Smith of Frontgrade Aethercomm. During the Anaheim show, John Watson, a PCB design instructor at Palomar College, led a panel of his past and present students, including Jon, who shared his story of switching from a construction career to PCB design in a matter of months, courtesy of Watson’s Palomar College design curriculum.
Designing for Cost to Manufacture
11/21/2024 | Marcy LaRont, I-Connect007ICAPE's Richard Koensgen, a seasoned field application engineer with a rich background in PCB technology, shares his journey of working with customers and manufacturers through the intricacies of circuit board development and emphasizes the importance of early-stage collaboration with PCB designers. With a focus on tackling the most challenging aspects of PCB design and manufacturing, he discusses everything from layout considerations to the thermal challenges of today's technology when it comes to designing for cost.
Nolan's Notes: The Rise (and Risk) of Data
11/05/2024 | Nolan Johnson -- Column: Nolan's NotesLast month, I read about a United Airlines flight that declared an emergency over the middle of Hudson Bay in northern Canada. All the cockpit screens had gone blank and both flight management computers had entered into a “degraded mode with limited capabilities.” The pilots had lost most of their autopilot functionality, but still had enough control systems to manually fly the plane to a safe landing at O’Hare.
Root-cause Analysis and Problem-solving
11/01/2024 | Happy Holden, I-Connect007An essential skill for any process engineer in printed circuit fabrication is the ability to conduct root-cause analysis (RCA) and problem-solving. These are related to TQC and Six Sigma applications and are essential for customer support and continued profitability. All engineers will encounter these methods sooner or later, but it will likely be sooner if you are in product or process engineering in manufacturing.