Scania, SKF, Ghana Police Service join forces to fight counterfeits

On October 26th, the Swedish Consulate in Ghana invited business leaders and key stakeholders in the transportation, mining and construction business to inform and interact about the importance of genuine, high-quality spare parts.

Scania and SKF, two global companies came to discuss what actions they have taken to ensure their customers use original spare parts.

The market is over flooded by counterfeit parts, which causes concerns from both a business and a road safety perspective.

Vehicles and machines built to last for a long time gets a drastically reduced lifetime due to unpredictable quality and performance, but it can also lead to abridged road safety due to for example malfunctioning breaks caused by substandard brake pads.

Counterfeited products are sold at a similar price level as that of genuine spare parts. This makes it very difficult for the customers to judge the authenticity based on price.

Scania and SKF therefore stress the importance of customers to use known sources for their demand. The companies have also gone to great length to help customers determine if the product in question is genuine, which is demonstrated by for example SKF’s mobile application “Authenticate App”.

The increasing competition in the transport sector means that companies have to focus to a greater extent on overall operating costs, vehicle uptime and potential productivity, at the same time as meeting increasingly stringent environmental legislation.

Fleet maintenance is increasingly growing in importance, as is the influence of the vehicle inspection sector. With Scania and SKF as suppliers of services and spare parts, customers can focus on their transport assignments instead of repairs and maintenance.

Scania’s spare parts have been developed to meet the most stringent requirements on function and quality, as well as service life and reliability. In the seminar, Scania and SKF explain why customers should choose Scania Parts and SKF bearings, which is primarily on the basis of technical quality.

To give an example: Perfectly adapted ball joints maintain safety. The steering system consists of many safety critical components. All of them must fit together perfectly to maintain the function in this important system.

The ball joint forms the transition to link arms and steering cylinders. If the ball joint fails then the steering capacity is lost. Quality varies

between the different ball joints on the market, despite their similar appearance. The difference is on the inside.

To prove this, the invited people are offered to see how two spare parts – original and counterfeit – are cut open and dissected.

An award ceremony also takes place to commend members of the Ghana Police Force for their Contributions in Deterring Counterfeit.