On March 9th, 2011, Senators Levin and McCain, the Chairs of the Senate Armed Services Committee, initiated an investigation into counterfeit components in the Department of Defense’s supply chain. The full text of this announcement can be found here. This singular event has brought the issue of counterfeit components into the limelight.

Since this announcement there have been several very public events which include a scathing interview on CNN with Senator Brown (watch the video here) and the dispatch of a delegation from the Senate Armed Services Committee who were refused access to Shenzhen by China (more details available here).

While this issue is beginning to get the media and political coverage it deserves, there is still a lot of work to be done by industry and governments to stop this problem. One possible solution is to eliminate the raw materials used by the counterfeiters by restricting the flow of E-Waste to China and Northern Africa. Currently the United States, Haiti, and Afghanistan are the only countries who have not signed the Basel Convention on the handling of hazardous and E-Waste. This would be a start.

In May of 2011, IDEA announced the release of IDEA-STD-1010B which is a major revision to the initial standard release dated 2006. The B revision includes provisions for inspection by component package, guidance on advanced inspection techniques, and provisions for managing test service providers. Please visit the Oxygen Electronics blog to see how the use of this standard and advanced inspection techniques prevented the escapement of a counterfeit component supplied to Oxygen Electronics.