AS6081: What It Requires, and What We Actually Do

What is AS6081?

AS6081 is the SAE International aerospace standard that specifies how distributors, brokers and independent distributors avoid, detect, mitigate and dispose of fraudulent and counterfeit electronic parts.

The standard was first issued in 2012 and the current revision is AS6081A (2023). Its published scope is to standardise practices for identifying reliable sources, assessing and mitigating counterfeit risk, controlling suspect or confirmed fraudulent and counterfeit parts, and reporting them.

AS6081 sits alongside AS5553, which addresses the same problem for manufacturers, and AS9120B, the quality-management standard for aerospace distributors, which requires distributors to address counterfeit-part prevention.

Does Schontek organise its incoming inspection around AS6081?

Yes. Our receiving inspection and our records are structured against the AS6081 requirement areas, and we state below which of them we cover today and which our certification programme still has to close.

Requirement areas are listed as an AS6081 audit covers them; we do not hold an AS6081 certificate and do not claim conformance to individual clause numbers.

What does decapsulation detect, and when do we do it?

Decapsulation removes the package material so the die, bond wires and lead frame can be compared against a known-good reference, which exposes remarked, re-packaged or wrong-die parts that visual inspection cannot see.

• What it exposes — die size and topology, bond-wire count and routing, lead-frame finish, and evidence of sanding, blacktopping or re-marking
• When we apply it — where the source is open market, the part is obsolete or high value, or the customer application requires it
• Destructive test — decapsulation consumes the part it is performed on, so tell us your requirement when you request a quote and we will confirm how it is applied to your order

What traceability records does Schontek keep?

We keep lot-level records that let you reconstruct where a delivered part came from and what was done to verify it, and we produce them on request.

Is Schontek AS6081 certified?

No, and we would rather say so plainly than leave you to infer it from a badge.

Until those are issued, the controls that stand behind a shipment are the ones described above: a published inspection policy, source grading disclosed before you commit, receiving inspection with decapsulation where the risk warrants it, lot-level traceability records produced on request, and a written RMA process.

We publish certificate numbers and issuing bodies on this page as soon as we hold them. We do not display a certificate that belongs to another company.

What should a procurement engineer check before buying from an independent distributor?

Seven questions, and what a usable answer looks like for each. These apply to us as much as to anyone else.

Is buying shortage parts from an independent distributor safer than from a broker?

It depends on the controls, not the label. The title a supplier uses tells you less than what it inspects, what it records and what it stands behind.

A broker matches supply and demand and may never take custody of the parts. An independent distributor typically holds or qualifies stock, performs receiving inspection and issues its own documentation. That structural difference is why the distributor route usually carries more recourse, but it is not by itself a guarantee: a distributor that does not inspect, or that will not disclose its source, is worse than a broker who does both.

Judge on four things: documented receiving inspection, lot-level traceability you can actually obtain, source type disclosed in writing before you commit, and a written RMA path. Schontek publishes its position on all four on this page and in our Quality Policy, including the two AS6081 requirement areas we do not yet cover.

Read the full Quality & Inspection Policy