Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1275152
AUGUST 2020 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 23 to address the actual root issue of counterfeit ingress potential using traceability in two dif- ferent ways. Within an organization, such as a manufac- turing house, you need an internal control of materials in a trusted environment, which we call internal traceability. For sure, bad actors may exist internally, and they could deliber- ately misplace something, but if that hap- pens, you have a much bigger problem. Inter- nal traceability must be able to document the provenance of materials in an outgoing prod- uct to the specific internal material responsibil- ity. This was covered in the first release of the IPC-1782 traceability standard, such that you could take any component by reference desig- nator within a manufactured product and track its provenance all the way back to the incom- ing material and associated responsibility—for example, the box and reel in which it came from the supplier. Such traceability imple- mented within the IIoT-based MES solution gives you absolute proof, which can be used in a court of law—if required—that the specific instance of material came from this package from this supplier. Johnson: Now, you know what's happening inside your facility, at your location, in the supply chain. Ford: Exactly. IPC-1782 is the standard for traceability within electronics assembly manu- facturing, and there are other sources of trace- ability that apply to niche areas of component manufacturing, for example, the semiconduc- tor industry. The challenge is that you also need traceability for logistics to link the dif- ferent elements of manufacturing operations together for material flow, as well as the flow of sub-assemblies between sites. Materials will be shipped outside of the trusted environment. Every container or carrier of materials has a label, which—if using simple barcodes and text—becomes the identification of a target for a potential counterfeit. The next stage of IPC- 1782, revision A, then set about additionally to define the rules for external traceability. The question was, "How do you prevent packages from being targeted, and also ensure that asso- ciated data remains intact?" This is how it works. For a start, each con- tainer should not be labeled in such a way that anyone unauthorized is able to identify the contents—so-called "anonymous packaging." In fact, it is safer not to have a label on it at all, as any man-made label can be copied or rep- licated by someone else. 1D and 2D barcodes, and even holographic images, can all be cop- ied. It is better to employ some intrinsic fea- ture of the packaging itself to create a unique identity. There are a number of technologies to do this. There are two great examples of this. One is a company called Alitheon, where they can individually identify seemingly identical objects simply using surface features. After an initial picture is taken, the object can be iden- tified even after they've been in service, used, abused, and even damaged. The other exam- ple is a technology called fiber-code, created by a company in Scotland called Septillion, which features randomly embedded UV sensi- tive fibers within the packaging material, mak- ing each instance unique. Using just a mobile phone and a UV light, each package gives a unique immutable identi- fication. These technologies can both easily be integrated into systems on top of existing logis- tics operations. The digital side, linked to each physical identifier, is then a record made with data from each key logistics event, for example, the initial statement of content, the evidence of packaging, moving, splitting and combining packages, etc. which all has to be very securely recorded, and assured tamper resistance in the