Wired Success

During this historical period of time where the world is experiencing the COVID-19 outbreak, businesses everywhere are responding with necessary measures and precautions. Stopping the spread cannot be done through maintaining the normal day-to-day functions.

At the heart of every aspect of our business, configuration management is extremely vital to Liberty Electronics. In fact, we built our entire Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System around it. Expanding our Oracle Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) software to include multiple ERP functions—estimating, planning, inventory and production control, quality assurance, etc.—enabled us to embed revision management into every step of the process.

In today’s manufacturing world, “good” is not good enough when it comes to configuration management. In our increasingly competitive, fast-paced market, change processes are vital to ensuring that you get the right components, adhere to modified critical dimensions, and have the correct code in software programs and revised tool settings; these are only a few of the numerous reasons as to why configuration management is so important. There is no question regarding the rising necessity of exceptional configuration management in the manufacturing world.

Information technology can promote the development and productivity of a business. That is why IT is a core competency at Liberty Electronics and plays a key role in satisfying our customers.  Rather than using off-the-shelf software, which is often a “jack of all trades and master of none,” Liberty employs a different approach. 

In the past, using commercial software applications has forced Liberty to make sacrifices and compromises due to the different limitations of these products, which ultimately was inefficient to the company. Instead, Liberty strategically customizes robust applications in order to achieve our customer-driven requirements as an electronic manufacturing services contract manufacturer. As customer and industry requirements evolve, our software also evolves through updates by our IT department. Our self-sufficient approach to IT ultimately reduces cost and lead-times, speeds up simple actions through automation, and improves customer service. Here are a couple of examples:

OEMs and suppliers both bring experience, expertise and specialized knowledge to the table during the manufacturing process. Suppliers often don’t enter the picture until a design is created, and sometimes not until prototypes have been manufactured. However, there’s an argument to be made that a partnership between an OEM and a trusted supplier should be formed during the design phase. Collaborative design can benefit both OEMs and suppliers for a number of reasons.

Although the aerospace industry is leading the effort to combat counterfeiting through methods like serialization tracing and supply chain control, the use and sale of counterfeit parts is still an issue in manufacturing. Counterfeiters are changing with the times too, applying more sophisticated approaches and techniques to skirt testing, laws, and standards. Blanks, clones, and undisclosed remanufacturing are just some of the growing trends infiltrating the world of counterfeit.

Investing in the right prevention procedures, purchasing processes, and product quality controls might seem daunting, but the value of the price of protection far outweighs the cost you might pay for buying, selling, or using counterfeit parts. Here are some steps you can take to mitigate the risk of falling victim to counterfeit.