Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1527276
OCTOBER 2024 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 43 a taxonomy or a language to describe those complexities properly. For instance, if your car has tires that happen to be counterfeit, is your whole car counterfeit? If you add an aer- market part to a product, we don't necessar- ily think of that as a counterfeit system. ere are many entities in the assembly supply chain, and we need a way to categorize how we think about and deal with these kinds of problems from the standpoint of the whole assembly. Is there something in the assembly that someone inserted which potentially compromises reli- ability or security? Could it simply be a fraud- ulent grab to make money off somebody else's name? Is it 95% or more authentic, but does it have something about it that is different from its intended design? Assemblies come in many sizes, shapes, and varieties and for different end markets. Das: Selling new multi-chip modules (MCMs) in an old format has been around for a while. For example, these may be power supplies in a molded plastic part. ey look like a single part, but internally, there are coils and connec- tions. It's a miniature assembly. Just because something looks like a single part, if it is inter- nally made up of individual components, we generally consider that to be an assembly. Your earlier example clearly involved some- one who was a bad actor; he was acting with premeditated intent to counterfeit, as opposed to every effort to use genuine com- ponents. There's accidental vs. intentional, for sure, and it's more complex since there's a hierarchy to it. Where does the EMS provider fall in all of this? Das: We have standards for the OEMs, such as AS5553. ose are primarily for OEMs and prime contractors, mainly in the military aero- space area. We have created a standard for authorized component distributors. Some- times, within that distribution frame, they apply this standard to other things they sell. ere are standards for independent dis- tributors, of course, and we are fortunate to have many participate in creating the standard. Mike leads the group for the laboratory detec- tion techniques, which is AS6171. For all of them, we have subject matter experts from the EMS industry joining occa- sionally. EMS is, of course, a broad category ranging from mom-and-pop shops to multi- billion-dollar companies, but I have not seen a standard specifically designed for EMS yet. As an observer, I know that some of the first pol- icies regarding the counterfeit detection pro- cess came from the EMS industry. Lately, I've not seen as much involvement from that sector. How should those standards be formed, administered, and regulated? Das: Within the United States, the aerospace group at SAE International has taken the lead in creating all sorts of related standards. Ear- lier on, other groups worked on it, including SEMI and the old GEIA (Government Elec- tronics and Information Technology Associ- ation). However, the full support of the EMS industry is needed to make it happen. Azarian: It could also happen at IPC because that's where the EMS industry looks for stan- Michael Azarian