Autor: Oliver Kleine

The increasing threat of German industrial goods manufactures by product piracy and other types of unintentional know how transfer is all but accepted today. However, generally speaking, piracy management today is still rather reactive than preventive and in most parts the results of a more or less tactical planning approach. Strategic concerns such as the fundamental strategic fit of countermeasures and actual piracy situation have not yet been solved satisfactorily. Quality assurance in strategic decision making is a prerequisite for a successful strategy against product piracy. This article presents an approach to solve the issue based on the well-known quality function deployment (QFD) method.

Business losses by industrial counterfeiting and product piracy are versatile and substantial. It is a matter of concern for any industry sector [1]. For capital goods manufacturers, almost two of three businesses have already been struck by piracy [2, 3]. Effective countermeasures are, however, not only an issue during product development and production, but require also special consideration in after sales life cycle phases. Thus, PiratPro (www.piratpro.de) aims at holistic concepts that integrate service processes and technical countermeasures into “copy-proof” product bundles.