Ensuring the integrity and reliability of supplied components is more challenging in today’s fast-moving manufacturing landscape. Fraudulent suppliers, inconsistencies in materials, and evolving risks threaten product quality, operational efficiency, and business reputation. Traditional inspection methods leave critical gaps that bad actors can exploit, increasing the likelihood of defects, counterfeits, and financial loss.

While there are hardware solution thats aim to tackle quality and testing challenges, Palitronica's novel approach is unique. The Anvil Checkpoint is a broad-spectrum, fully black-box testing solution that delivers flexibility and scalability across products. It takes on some of manufacturing biggest challenges.

Minimize Business Risk by Proactively Detecting Fraudulent Suppliers

Businesses face ongoing risks from fraudulent suppliers who continuously develop new methods for monetary benefit by introducing counterfeit, substandard, or tampered components into the supply chain. Traditional supplier verification methods often rely on spot checks or manual inspections, leaving gaps that bad actors can exploit.

Anvil provides a fully-automated batch-level screening system that detects deviations, modifications, and inconsistencies in supplied components. Anvil identifies even the most subtle anomalies without requiring predefined test programming. This allows manufacturers to detect fraud proactively, ensuring only genuine, high-quality components make it into production—reducing warranty claims, rework costs, and reputational damage.

Catch problems as early as possible and in any stage of production

Anvil can test electronic assemblies at any stage, including partially assembled and unpowered units, allowing it to be integrated at any point in the manufacturing process to detect anomalies and defects.

Using Anvil immediately after SMT helps prevent the waste of expensive electronic components by identifying defects early.
Applying Anvil after manual tuning and handling detects randomly introduced defects.
During enclosure assembly, Anvil can identify late-stage defects even when test points are no longer accessible.

Optimize Cycle Times by Reducing the Need for Lengthy ICT Tests

Testing highly complex, high-layer PCBs with thousands of test points is inherently time-consuming due to the need for resistance, capacitance, and inductance measurements, trace verification, impedance checks, and crosstalk analysis—all of which have limited parallelization capabilities. These traditional In-Circuit Testing (ICT) processes often introduce bottlenecks in high-volume manufacturing, increasing test cycle times and operational costs.

Anvil addresses this challenge by leveraging RF-based testing to create a detailed electronic fingerprint of the silicon geometry in the unit under test (UUT). By comparing the UUT's response against an approved reference profile, Anvil determines whether the unit is electrically identical to a known-good system. If the measurements align within the expected parameters, costly and time-intensive ICT tests can be skipped, significantly reducing test time while maintaining quality assurance. This streamlined approach enhances manufacturing efficiency, allowing businesses to increase throughput without compromising defect detection.

Streamline test equipment/processes across hardware products

Anvil enables testing through a common connector, allowing manufacturers to streamline quality control across multiple products that share the same interface. By leveraging a standardized connector, Anvil can perform blackbox testing on different electronic assemblies without requiring custom test setups for each product.

This universal approach simplifies integration into existing manufacturing lines, reducing setup time and cost while maintaining high test coverage. This flexibility makes Anvil an efficient and scalable solution for electronics manufacturers seeking to improve quality assurance and supply chain integrity across diverse product lines.

Seamless Test Equipment Reuse Across Hardware Revisions

Traditional electronics testing often requires new test setups and programming when hardware revisions occur, increasing costs and downtime. With Anvil, manufacturers can continue using the same test equipment as long as the common connector remains unchanged. After capturing a new approved profile, Anvil can immediately resume testing without requiring custom programming or fixture updates.

By eliminating the need for test reconfiguration, Anvil provides a future-proof solution that adapts to hardware changes effortlessly. When a new revision is introduced, it can be instantly validated against a known-good reference, keeping production efficient and ensuring consistent quality assurance—all while leveraging existing test infrastructure.

Prevent Fraudulent Returns with Precise Product Re-Identification

Handling returned products comes with the risk of fraudulent claims, counterfeit replacements, and tampered components. Traditional return verification methods rely on serial numbers or visual inspections, which can be easily manipulated. Anvil solves this by capturing a unique electronic signature during manufacturing, allowing it to unmistakably re-identify the exact unit when it is returned from the field.

By comparing the returning product’s profile to its original factory-stored signature, Anvil can instantly verify authenticity, detecting any modifications, swapped components, or counterfeit replacements. This prevents warranty fraud, unauthorized repairs, and knock-off returns, ensuring businesses only service genuine products while protecting against unwarranted financial losses.

Scorecard Suppliers for Manufacturing Quality and Variability

Ensuring consistent quality from suppliers is critical to maintaining reliable end products. However, when supplier variability occurs, whether due to drifting quality over time or batch-to-batch inconsistencies, it can introduce significant risk to the final product. Anvil identifying patterns of consistency, drift, and batch variations in incoming materials without the need for special programming.

By comparing the RF response signals of received components, Anvil can quickly detect variations in supplier quality, such as changes in assembly silicon geometry, drifts, or discrete batch changes. When non-consistent products are detected, the system flags them, reducing the need for increased manual testing and ensuring higher confidence in the final integrated product. This proactive monitoring helps businesses address quality issues early, reducing the risk of defective products and maintaining consistent manufacturing standards.

Quantitative Evidence for Cybersecurity Supply-Chain Risk Management

Traditional risk management approaches in supply chains often rely on questionnaires, expensive sampling, and subjective relationships, making it difficult to assess actual risk levels. Anvil provides quantitative evidence for cybersecurity supply-chain risk management (C-SCRM) by detecting real-time changes in manufactured products. This data-driven approach offers a more objective and measurable method for managing risks related to product authenticity and integrity.

When the received product remains consistent with previously approved profiles, it indicates no increase in risk. However, significant changes within a batch or between batches signal a substantial rise in risk, particularly for cybersecurity vulnerabilities or product tampering. Anvil’s ability to detect these discrepancies ensures that businesses can manage and mitigate risks proactively, providing a solid foundation for data-driven decision-making in supply-chain security.

Efficient Repair by Identifying Defects in Individual Assemblies

Products often consist of multiple complex assemblies, and repairing them typically involves replacing one assembly after another until the defect is resolved. This process is inefficient and costly, as good assemblies are often discarded, even if they are not the source of the problem. Anvil addresses this issue by enabling precise testing of individual assemblies within the product.

With RF reflectometry, Anvil allows manufacturers to test and identify defects in specific assemblies without needing to remove and replace entire units. This targeted approach saves both time and resources, as only the faulty assemblies are replaced, while functional components are preserved. By reducing unnecessary waste and improving repair efficiency, Anvil helps businesses optimize maintenance and minimize downtime, ultimately enhancing the overall cost-effectiveness of product repairs.

Prevent Mistakes in Managing Product Configurations

As products evolve and are manufactured in multiple configurations (e.g., different HBOMs or component variations), the risk of mistakes—such as picking or assembling the wrong configuration—becomes more prevalent. These errors can lead to costly delays, customer dissatisfaction, or even product recalls. Anvil solves this problem by checking the electronic signature of a unit under test (UUT) and comparing it to a specified configuration profile.

By using RF reflectometry to validate the product's configuration against an approved reference, Anvil ensures that only the correct components and assemblies are used in production and repair processes. This automated validation minimizes human error, reduces the risk of incorrect product assembly, and ensures that businesses maintain configuration accuracy across diverse product variants. By preventing configuration mistakes, Anvil helps companies improve operational accuracy and minimize costly errors in their production processes.

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In industries where safety, performance, and compliance are critical, undetected defects and supplier inconsistencies can lead to costly failures, recalls, and reputational damage. Anvil provides manufacturers with an advanced, data-driven approach to quality control, enabling early detection of anomalies, fraud, and process variations at multiple stage of production.

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Resources

On-demand Webinar: Rolls-Royce and Palitronica on broad-spectrum testing complex ECUs

Can You Scorecard Your Suppliers? The Key to Quality and Consistency in Electronics Manufacturing