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80 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2019 What Questions Should You Ask? Here are four questions to address to reduce the chance of failure and increase reliability: 1. How are we organized to meet compliance challenges? 2. What do we prioritize in our compliance work and why? 3. What policies and procedures do we need? 4. How do we train our colleagues in compliance? A company supplying an article to a product purchased by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) must be aware of the strict compliance the DoD places on all exports and imports. The consequences can be severe; there are no excus - es, and one cannot simply claim that one did not know; it is your responsibility to know. In other words, plausible deniability does not work. Sounds scary and like a lot of work? It is, but not being compliant, or not taking the regula- tions seriously, is even scarier. Again, compli- ance management in the defense industry is of the utmost importance. A compliance strategy should be simple, stringent, and provide the company with an effective monitoring capabil- ity of its supply chain. This can be addressed by asking four questions: 1. Have we identified the risks? 2. Are we monitoring the risks? 3. Have we implemented elements to reduce those risks? 4. Do we have an action plan to implement if needed? Where Do You Start? Let's begin with six tips to get you started on your compliance strategy: 1. Stay up to date on rules and regulations. Don't think you know it all. Seek advice. 2. Make sure you have a local champion— one that has the ultimate responsibility for compliance. 3. Involve all departments in a cross- functional, multi-departmental task force, making sure all involved employees are trained to identify and handle compliance articles. 4. Customize your procedures, systems, and methodologies to support compliance handling. 5. Restrict and control access to sensitive information. Make sure you only grant access to the minimum number of people needed to handle the task. 6. Contact and involve yourself with your customers' products. Request compliance information to ensure that all parties are aware of the risks of being non-compliant. Sharing is caring. Offering support, knowledge, and service during your customers' product development process is the essential element to reduce the possibility of printed circuit failure and increase the reliability of your customers' products. En- suring that vital information is shared at the right stage of the product development process will result in the selection of the correct manu- facturer, design, compliance setup, regulation, standards, and technical requirements of your printed circuit. Figure 1 shows one example of a product development process and a number of different steps where one can support devel- opment to reduce risk and increase reliability. Each step is equally important for the prod- uct and its potential success. We have experi- enced over and over again that early involve- ment is the key, and sharing information with compliant partners is the requirement. Having sorted out all the technical aspects, one question still remains. What information is imperative to have in order to understand the compliance requirements? We have learned that there is some vital information you should have answered. These questions will create a framework for which countries and companies you can cooperate with—an internal risk anal- ysis (Figure 2). After completing the internal risk analysis for the product, one should consider conducting an external risk analysis (Figure 3). This is an analysis of factors prone to investigate the re - classification cost of your printed circuit. These external factors can affect your supply chain by