Stock Audits from
SKF’s Brand Protection, an easy solution for verification of
products marked
SKF, have been delivering massive savings for customers operating in a wide spectrum of industries. Recently, the
SKF Brand Protection team assisted three major users of
SKF products in South
Africa to identify counterfeit
SKF products in their production stores. Through the timeous identification of counterfeit
products, the potential risk of catastrophic and costly breakdowns was eliminated, subsequently optimising uptime and production for end-customers.
SKF is globally renowned as a responsible supplier of premium
bearing and rotating
products, technologies and
systems supported by professional OEM after-market
services. The
bearing specialist cultivates long-term customer relationships and support
SKF products over their complete life-span. The
SKF brand is associated with premium quality, reliability and
efficiency.
Conversely, counterfeit
products, usually branded to look very similar to
SKF products, do not offer the same guarantee of quality, reliability and
efficiency as the genuine
products and can seriously compromise machine and plant availability. When end-users are under pressure to find
products fast due to halts in production to wait for replacements or are under pressure to reduce cost, the temptation is high to make a hasty purchase from any available source in the market. One fake component procured from a seller who is not an Authorised Distributor of
SKF can potentially damage large critical machines with extremely costly consequences.
SKF therefore strongly advises customers to purchase genuine
SKF products from SKFAuthorised Distributors. In line with
SKF’s compelling narrative on the tremendous risks that counterfeit
products pose to
manufacturing, production and processing plants, the company is on a resolute drive to eliminate counterfeit
products and help customers avoid all the pitfalls of fake product procurement. To achieve this objective,
SKF’s specialised Brand Protection team - conducts on-site Audits and Verifications.
Additionally, customers are able to conveniently make use of
SKF’s in-house developed Authenticate App (available on android & iOS platform) which provides customers with a user-friendly platform to send product photos via any smart device to
SKF specialists for verification of authenticity.The aim of the Brand Protection Audits is to ensure that
SKF products used are genuine and there are no surprises during operation.
These
solutions help prevent counterfeit
products entering stores and ultimately being used in machinery, potentially leading to exorbitant costs caused by premature breakdowns, unplanned production stoppages,
repairs and replacements, with little or no recourse for customers.
In addition, these audits assist companies in having a better understand of what
products they have in stock (genuine or counterfeit). Audits also help to quickly identify main problem areas and
SKF’s Brand Protection team is able to provide feedback on improvement measurements, enabling customers to implement better procurement measures, potentially realising massive savings going forward. Audits also educate customers on how to use the
SKF Authenticate App.