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PRESS RELEASE
Trade Wings Enhances Quality Assurance with New Inspection Equipment
PORTSMOUTH, NH, March 3, 2008 – Trade Wings, a global supply chain service provider, has increased its capability to assure quality of circuit boards, electronic components, and other parts in its in-house inventories. Newly acquired technology, coupled with a rigorous inspection process, assure that parts and components passing through the Trade Wings logistics center are genuine and free of defects.
At the heart of the Trade Wings inspection lab is a new high-resolution x-ray system. The system features a 5-micron spot size for microfocal inspection of parts. Intended primarily for use with electronic components, multilayer circuit boards, and electronic assemblies, it can also be used to inspect mechanical parts and sealed components. The x-ray system augments an existing electronic component decapsulating machine to enable complete component inspection.
The new x-ray system is particularly useful for detecting substandard and counterfeit parts. Counterfeiting of electronic parts and other goods produced overseas is a growing concern because counterfeit products have a dramatically higher failure rate due to lax manufacturing controls.
Differences between genuine and counterfeit electronic components have become very subtle and require a trained eye to detect. But in many cases, simple visual inspection isn’t adequate to spot counterfeits.
“This new lab equipment, in conjunction with existing quality processes, has virtually eliminated the possibility of counterfeit and substandard material coming into our distribution system and further on to the customer’s supply chain,” says Todd Adelman, Trade Wings president. “Now Trade Wings customers have the option to incorporate our inbound inspection procedures as part of their overall quality control and compliance initiatives. This enables a collaborative and highly cost-effective solution to the growing, unchecked supply of substandard materials negatively impacting their manufacturing efforts.”
Trade Wings uses an extensive quality process and sophisticated tools for detecting substandard parts. The process includes qualifying the material source, checking the packaging, and stringent inspection, including microscopy, x-ray inspection, and decapsulation. The process is part of the company’s Quality Management System, for which Trade Wings is ISO 9001 registered.
”We’re truly excited to offer this service to our customers, as it allows a secure means of capturing cost savings and flexibility offered by global independent distribution,” says Adelman. “We’ve enabled our customers to proactively leverage the supply chain rather than being forced to react to and deal with the costs associated with substandard materials leaking into their supply environment.”
The result of this comprehensive process has been a nearly total capture of inbound defective parts. Because of this, customers hold Trade Wings in high regard compared to other logistics suppliers.
Trade Wings provides custom supply chain solutions for original equipment manufacturers and their outsource partners. Designed to improve the efficiency of global supply chains, the company’s solutions encompass the areas of business intelligence, logistics, marketing and procurement, and global project management. For more information, visit http://www.tradewings.com/.
Contact:
Peter Curtis, Marketing and Media
603-610-1349
pcurtis@tradewings.com
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