Product Piracy

Functional safety (safety) and cyber security (security) are key aspects of modern industry and technology. Safety aims to minimize risks posed by system malfunctions. This includes measures to protect people and the environment from failures and errors within systems. Security focuses on protecting systems and networks from digital attacks. The primary security objectives include ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability. A joint consideration of safety and security is essential for the future of the process industry, as both the physical safety and digital integrity of modern systems must be ensured. In industrial practice, this creates a field of tension: measures to enhance security can negatively impact safety and vice versa. This article analyzes relevant standards and regulations, presents key approaches for the integrated consideration of safety and security, and highlights areas of further research.

Both globalization and digitalization yield high potential for an efficient exchange and use of information on the one hand, but on the other hand also require new levels of data management and security. In order to be able to exploit the full return on innovation, original producers need to secure their knowledge and competitive advantage, not ignoring the rising risk of being imitated any longer. Nowadays it is not sufficient to simply reduce the length of innovation cycles. Instead, companies have to actively invest into anti-counterfeiting measures in order to secure their local and global competitive advantage. Requirements relating to the security and effectivity of technical anti-counterfeiting concepts, and the development of such a security measure, are the subject of this article.

The products of the German machinery and plant engineering are worldwide successful. Therefore a lot of counterfeits exist. These represent a serious problem because the companies lose their return on investment. Under these conditions the project aims are to develop a method to detect potential threats and link them to effective protective measures.

On the technical level there are different possibilities to fight counterfeiting and to prohibit the use of counterfeited parts in machinery and equipment. The aim should be to enable the machinery and equipment to recognize the exchange of wearing or the assembly of additional parts automatically and to check their originality independently. RFID offers not only the conditions to realize the suggested functions but also the possibility to check the authenti-city of products along the whole supply chain. Of course, the checking of parts along the supply chain avoids that co-pies or counterfeited goods break into the original value added chain.

Companies of the capital goods industry are more and more confronted with an increasing global competition. Furthermore the demand for a faster customisation of customers’ goods is accompanied by a decreasing product lifecycle. This circumstances lead to an uniting of companies to a value added chain which can more resist the increasing requirements of the industry. Sensitive data is consequently changed beyond the enterprise limits and the threat of product piracy is increasing to a higher level. Due to the increasing problem of product piracy this article describes the different comprehension of product piracy and explains a procedure strategy for providing of central knowledge. This described approach is not only limited to the enterprise limits. It can be used for the entire value added chain.

Product piracy has risen to a serious problem for almost every manufacturer in the capital goods industry. Especially if the customer unwittingly mistake counterparts for original products, the manufacturer will lose parts of reputation. So manufacturers have to expand their quality management with new tasks to ensure that their original products are delivered to their customers. A holistic anti-counterfeiting-strategy provides adequate counter measures for this challenge.

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.

Product piracy poses an increasing threat to manufacturers and providers of products in the industrial sector. Therefore the application of technical solutions for the protection against product counterfeiting and copying becomes more and more important. In this context, especially the use of RFID technology constitutes an effective instrument for tracking original products and components along the supply chain and also for quick and reliable verification and confirmation of their authenticity. Within the joint project MobilAuthent, supported by the BMBF, a solution for forgery-proof product authentication and tracking along the supply chain based on RFID is being developed. This article introduces the first project results as well as the MobilAuthent concept. The presented solution can be flexibly adapted to different company and product-related requirements.

It is not possible to eliminate counterfeiting sustainably only by single and short-term measures. Particularly isolated legal measures fail because they have only late and short-term effects. An effective and sustainable anti-counterfeiting requires a process-oriented approach as well as an integrated protection system that combines legal, organizational, technological and political processes. To manage such an integrated system, a company has to implement a process oriented organization as well as a monitoring system.

Product piracy has risen to a serious problem for almost every OEM in the capital goods industry. Identifying the right counter-measures for creating and optimizing a holistic anti-counterfeiting-strategy helps to cope with these challenges. One of the most critical factors in developing such a strategy is establishing a cost/benefit ratio. A three-level selection concept helps choosing the right measures.