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Counterfeit Electronics Education Hub

Understanding counterfeit electronic components — what they are, how they enter supply chains, what they cost, and how they are detected.

Pillars

Pillar 1

What counterfeit electronic components are

Counterfeit and nonconforming electronic components: an ordered inspection sequence and a working taxonomy for identifying each type.

Pillar 2

What counterfeit electronic components cost

The cost of counterfeit electronic components is not a single number. It accumulates across evidence uncertainty, verification, and rework.

Pillar 3

Procurement channels

How the route from manufacturer to buyer shapes the evidence available for a lot: authorized, independent, and open-market channels.

Pillar 4

Why supplier qualification is not enough

Supplier qualification decides who may supply; it does not verify what is in a given lot. Why component integrity is a per-delivery question.

Pillar 5

Lot-level verification

How CILM selects verification depth for a specific procurement lot, using a four-level L0-L3 scale of progressively deeper evidence.

Pillar 6

Detection methods and their limits

What documentary, physical, and analytical methods for evaluating suspect electronic components can establish, and why no result proves authenticity.

Pillar 7

Measuring supply-chain risk

Why assessing a component or supplier is not the same as assessing a specific lot, and how CILM measures risk as evidence sufficiency.

Pillar 8

The evidence base

An open, anonymised corpus of real pre-purchase procurement communications, published on IEEE DataPort, and the research question it opens.

Pillar 9

Standards landscape

The established standards that govern counterfeit-part avoidance, testing, and distribution, and where CILM sits in relation to them.